Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: I call continued second reading debate on Bill 53.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 53 — RECALL AND INITIATIVE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

(continued)

Mr. Speaker: House Leader, Third Party.

Leader, Third Party.

A. Weaver: Thank you, hon. Speaker. I continue my place in this debate after the demotion I just received over lunch.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

For those in Hansard, I was introduced as the House Leader of the Third Party instead of the Leader of the Third Party.

Deputy Speaker: Leader of the Third Party.

A. Weaver: Thank you, hon. Speaker.

I rise again to continue my place as designated speaker from the Third Party on Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act, 2018.

[1:35 p.m.]

I kind of want to summarize where I left off before lunch. As I left off, we were standing here in this Legislature essentially debating this. On the one side of this House, we have a party and a third party, a government and a third party who are supporting legislation which will eliminate big money from recall campaigns and initiatives. What that’s saying is that this act — that is, the Recall and Initiative Act — will come into compliance, in essence, or come in to be similar to the elections act — which the Liberals voted against, mind you — to ban big money from B.C. politics.

Now, what the official opposition is arguing, in summary to this, is they’re actually arguing against this bill. In essence, this is what they’re saying. They’re defending the ability of one individual or one corporation with deep pockets to spend millions of dollars because he or she may have a personal grudge against an MLA. They’re aggrieved by the affronts to democracy that this would have by not allowing one individual with a grudge against an MLA or a grudge against a government’s policy to be able to spend their millions to actually recall an MLA or put forward an initiative.

You know, members opposite laugh. I mean, the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, who seems to find this all very funny, should probably spend more time talking to British Columbians about how happy they were that big money was finally from B.C. politics. Let’s see him stand up there and defend the fact that they, the B.C. Liberals, continue to argue that it is okay.

A year after we banned it from B.C. elections, they continue to argue that it is okay for a corporation to intervene in our electoral process and spend millions of dollars because they don’t like an MLA or they want an initiative. This, to the B.C. Liberals, is democracy. On this side of the House, we’re saying: “Enough of that.”

You clearly — you being the B.C. Liberals — have learned nothing from the last election. You have not listened to British Columbians for the last year and a half. You continue to think that British Columbians think it is okay that you seem to see that your only goal in this Legislature is to stand and complain about the fact that you’re in the opposition. At some point….

Deputy Speaker: Through the Chair, Member. Through the Chair.

A. Weaver: At some point, hon. Speaker, the B.C. Liberals need to recognize that they’re in a time-out, that they’re going to be sitting in opposition for a long time. As soon as they come to realize that, they might actually start to debate issues that matter here in the province of British Columbia, not issues that come to the foundation of their existence as a party and their quest for power.

I cannot believe this. They seem not to have learned anything. They seem to not recognize that people in British Columbia are cynical about the B.C. Liberal approach to politics.

They seem to not recognize that it is not okay for friends and donors to that party — through you, hon. Speaker, the other party that’s not on this side of the House…. It is not okay for them to have corporate donors give them hundreds of thousands of dollars and then them make decisions — some of which I hope to explore in the weeks and months ahead — that are clearly not in the best interests of British Columbians but are clearly in the best interests of the donors to the party making those decisions.

This is what we’re hearing. We’re hearing a defence of the status quo from a couple of years ago, the status quo that put the opposition where they are. In the debate, their critic to this file, the member for Vancouver-Langara, did not once mention the fact that this bill is actually banning big money. His remarks to the debate were a diatribe, a continuation of the 36 hours we’ve had to sit here and listen to the drivel — yes, drivel — misinformation, alternate facts emanating from members opposite as they try to campaign on a quest of fear over proportional representation.

[1:40 p.m.]

Again, they clearly haven’t understood that in British Columbia, the largest voting demographic are the millennials now. The largest voting demographic are the millennials. And what they don’t understand is that millennials are voting out of hope — the hope expressed by the two parties over here working together — and they’re not reacting to the fear of a dynasty from the last century, struggling to find a mandate for itself, unable to define who they are but united under one quest — the quest for power.

They have the gall at times to suggest that ride-hailing not being brought in — it’s going to come in this fall; it’s not being brought in now — was somehow not their responsibility.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

Please continue.

A. Weaver: I sat in this Legislature, and not once, not twice but three times brought in a private member’s bill that they had every opportunity to enact, to bring in ride-hailing, three years ago. But ah, they didn’t do it. Why? It’s because as I pointed out before lunch, the cynical framework that governs the party opposite is one in which it is all about power.

Heaven forbid they’d actually bring in ride-hailing in the lead-up to the 2017 provincial election and alienate a few key ridings south of the Fraser that they were hoping to get. Fortunately, they were trumped out by removing some tolls on those same ridings. Nevertheless, it wasn’t brought in. There is simply no high ground for the members opposite on this file. In fact, it’s almost humorous when they bring it forth.

Coming back to this Recall and Initiative Amendment Act. Again, we’re seeing nothing more than consistency here, eliminating the ability of big money to influence politics in B.C. in its final form. Coming to some of the changes that I outlined earlier that are happening. We know that the Election Act was amended last year and that this area, this particular component, the Recall and Initiative Act, was not. Right now, all that’s happening…. This is what we’re debating here, not the proportional representation that they’re hung up on.

Honestly, I come back to 36 hours in here. I’ve heard the same speech for 36 hours. For those riveted to Hansard, just go back and type in the words “stacked deck” and see how many of the members opposite have been reading their media lines.

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Changed game…. I mean rigged game. Look up “rigged game” as well. They have a 22-year-old staffer down in the basement who’s writing them speeches, and we have the puppets opposite who are reading the same speech member after member. It’s frankly embarrassing that we have 42 members opposite who collectively cannot write an independent speech, and we have to listen to that here.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Members. Let’s get back to the bill, please.

A. Weaver: Coming back to the financing, we know that this act aligns financing rules for recall campaigns with the Election Act and changes that were made last year, the Election Act amendment changes last year — which the members opposite also voted against because, of course, they still want big money in politics.

We know that this bill before us is banning unions and corporations, just as has occurred in the local government elections, school board elections and provincial elections. We know that it’s setting a $1,200 limit to contributions for individual British Columbians, just like it exists in the Elections Act, just like it exists for local governments and school boards. We know it creates a third-party spending limit of $5,000 for advertising during the recall petition period.

Frankly, these were needed changes. Frankly, I do not think it is okay if somebody with a grudge, or an MLA who happens to have access to a deep corporate sponsor, could somehow, in the case of an MLA — there might be a recall campaign — perhaps go to somebody and get several hundred thousand dollars to prop up a campaign and spread disinformation.

I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it’s right that the opposite could occur — that a particular vested interest could solely fund a campaign initiative in British Columbia. These are commonsense changes. Again, I get that these commonsense changes make the Liberals feel uncomfortable. They make them feel uncomfortable because they’ve been playing by this rigged game with a stacked deck for far too long. What they’re finally seeing is that that rigged game with a stacked deck is being fixed.

[1:45 p.m.]

They can’t take it because they know that the reason why they were able to remain in power and the reason why they were able to ignore British Columbians for so long was because they could appeal to their corporate donors for vast quantities of money to ensure that they got the airwaves filled with their message. They went on character assassinations of anyone who opposed them. That’s the way they go; that’s the way they operate.

Look at where we are now. Corporate donations no longer. The B.C. Greens are nipping at the tails of the B.C. Liberals in terms of annual funding. We are not too far from them in terms of annual funding. That’s what happens when people, not vested interests, have to support parties.

As I said, the bill is common sense. Only one recall campaign can exist at a time. Now, I heard that the member for Vancouver-Langara somehow thought this was an affront to democracy, clearly not even listening to his own arguments during his diatribe. On one hand, he would suggest that it’s important for people to actually have an attempt to follow through with a recall and that maybe now it might be misused. Well, in actual fact the best way to misuse a recall campaign would be, as soon as somebody did one, to start three others. Then you get people not knowing which petition they signed.

This is actually cleaning up a problem that existed with the HST initiative that went forward and passed. What if we’d had four that were running at the same time? Four initiatives like that? How would that initiative have been successful? There would’ve been many people who signed and said, “I’ve already signed it.” Confusion would have abounded. That’s commonsense rule No. 1. Again, B.C. Liberals hate that because it’s not the kind of status quo of their cynical party politics from the past.

Another smart change. We’re getting a prohibition of a recall petition six months before general voting day for a scheduled election. My understanding is that I think there was a recommendation for a year, but this is a compromise from what was actually asked for by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Six months makes sense. It’s kind of ridiculous to be able to have a recall campaign initiated in the six months, so that after you have the 30 days, you’ve got a few months left. You call a by-election, and basically, the person may not even come into the Legislature, or very much. Then you swear him in; you swear him out. Back to the election. It’s consistent, again, with by-election legislation. The six-month time frame is entirely consistent with that. Makes some positive changes, this act does, to violations of the act.

It provides the Chief Electoral Officer with regulation-making authority. What it’s not doing, despite the fact…. If you listen to members opposite, you’d think the world was going to end. Chicken Little and his or her friends opposite would suggest that the sky is falling. This bill does not provide any new protections for MLAs. It actually creates a level playing field that ensures the interests of British Columbians are front and centre, not vested corporate and union interests.

If people wanted to make this harder, they would’ve pushed it up to 50 percent, to 60 percent. It’s 40 percent. Nothing has changed with that requirement of 40 percent of the electorate. It’s a very high threshold, a hard threshold, but it is still the only threshold that exists in Canada. We are the one jurisdiction that has that.

I don’t hear us today saying: “Let’s repeal this legislation.” I don’t hear government today saying: “Oh, let’s make it 60 percent.” I don’t hear government today saying: “Let’s ban donations.” All I hear in this bill is government putting forward a very, very reasonable approach to protect our democracy from the influence of big money and special interests.

To conclude, I have sat here now for, it must be, two weeks listening to members opposite in question period, in speeches. It seems that they have forgotten what it means to govern in this province, what it means to be in opposition. The role of an opposition is not to try to solely argue for everything in terms of trying to actually save a party and get back into power, no matter what. It’s about representing the will of the people of British Columbia.

The will of the people of British Columbia is that big money be gone out of politics here.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Aw, thank you — I don’t know whether I’m able to acknowledge somebody not sitting in their chair — to somebody who normally sits down in the Premier’s chair for the support of this.

Interjection.

[1:50 p.m.]

A. Weaver: Of course the member for Kamloops–North Thompson is shocked that the Premier would support this bill.

What should be shocking to the member for Kamloops–North Thompson is the fact that they, their party, are yet again standing up before British Columbians and saying that it is okay for one corporation to donate whatever they want, because they have a grudge against an MLA, to try to out that MLA. Or it’s equally okay for the member for Kamloops–North Thompson to go to a corporation and say: “I have a recall campaign against me. Can you give me a million bucks to fund the no campaign?”

He’s essentially arguing that that’s okay. That is the essence of the argument that we have before us. The members opposite think this is funny, but what is funny is their lack of moral compass, the fact that their wind vane is broken. It’s spinning. There’s no direction. There are no values.

British Columbians don’t know what they stand for, apart from trying to get back into power to ensure that their vested corporate interests are at the table, through donations, to actually ensure that their friend’s interest, as opposed to British Columbians’ interests, are put front and centre in this Legislature in decision-making in British Columbia.

With that, I proudly stand, and my colleagues proudly stand, in support of this speech. I look forward to continued debate.

P. Milobar: I must say that it’s always a little difficult to get up and follow such a self-serving, sanctimonious and hypocritical speech as that, but I will give it my best shot.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act, also known in these parts — quickly becoming known — as the EPA, also known as the self-preservation act.

This bill is fundamentally flawed. To hear the previous speaker talk, I think it actually shines a light on a lot of those concerns. In fact, this bill…. Maybe we were originally thinking it was for some already-talked-about recall campaigns, but perhaps the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, who seems so concerned about this, is worried that people in his riding maybe are a little bit concerned about his bluster and lack of action around the speculation tax.

Maybe members in his party and his riding are a little bit concerned about his bluster and lack of action on Site C. Maybe they’re worried about his lack of action and bluster when it comes to LNG. Maybe they’re worried about his lack of action and, in fact, helping to be one impetus to drive Kinder Morgan to now be a nationalized project.

Maybe they’re worried about the inevitable out, the convenient out that will happen when the climate action plan comes forward and it’s nothing but a diluted piece of legislation. Instead of bringing the government down around it, he will prop the government up yet again. Maybe he’s the one that’s actually worried about a recall campaign happening in Oak Bay–Gordon Head.

Frankly, I thought that the Attorney General’s comments were ridiculous until I heard the member, the Leader of the Third Party. To stand in this House and suggest that I was laughing because of the bill…. I was laughing because of the absolutely extreme, ludicrous examples that the Leader of the Third Party was bringing forward.

To suggest that this bill was designed because, in previous recall campaigns, individuals, let alone corporations, were running out and spending millions upon millions of dollars to fund recall campaigns shows you just how desperate and extreme both the Attorney General and the Leader of the Third Party are when it comes to this piece of legislation. The fact that they are reaching that far to try to come up with some type of a red herring for people to latch on to is flat-out ridiculous.

The banning of big money when it relates to recall is one thing. I would point out that it was conveniently forgotten about with all the other legislative changes. They didn’t make an amendment. It didn’t trigger when we dealt with the local government election act and made those changes in time for the local government election.

[1:55 p.m.]

It didn’t trigger that this was actually part of the legislation when they brought in the first legislation around election financing. No, this has been triggered nine, ten days, eight days before recall campaigns can go active.

Frankly, I don’t get to Point Grey that often. It’s a little bit outside of my neighbourhood when it comes to price point for housing, but I have driven through it. I have seen for quite some time very large signs, pretty much like a countdown clock, indicating to the Attorney General, in his own home riding, that a recall campaign is on its way.

When the Attorney General stands in this House and tries to make it sound like he’s protecting everybody, and then the laughable extreme of his quote saying he actually would feel uncomfortable if people were trying to defend him by donating…. That’s ridiculous in the extreme — trying to come up with an excuse to justify legislation that is taking a sledgehammer to a nonexistent problem.

We’ve had 26 recall initiatives in this province with a zero success rate on those 26. So the fact that the Attorney General or the Leader of the Third Party would be this worried about these phantom millionaires that are going to come in with millions upon millions of dollars for a recall campaign is beyond ridiculous.

Let’s set aside that part of this bill, and let’s look into the whole 51 pages. Because although the Attorney General and the Leader of the Third Party would love us to think that this is only about big money, it’s a 51-page bill. It’s a 51-page bill that hammers down on anybody’s ability to try to engage in their civic right to try and recall somebody. And I say “try,” because, again, 26 times it has not been successful.

I’m not sure where all this phantom big money was on those other 26 times, but the Attorney General seems to be very, very worried that they’re going to come now.

The problem with this bill is…. Those same signs that are up on people’s lawns, it gets very confusing if they’re allowed to do that individually or not in this bill. In fact, the cap, and everything else that they have in here, makes it almost impossible for anybody to run a proper recall campaign. By that I mean there’s almost not enough money in this for the limits for you to properly photocopy and have forms and petitions for you to be able to take door to door. And we’re not even sure how you would account for the pens and the paper, or the pencils, that you would need, if that would count as a donation or not.

Because it’s ridiculous in the extreme when you read through the 51 pages that this so-called legislation gets into. It gets into very back-and-forth, confusing areas. And one has to ask: what’s the rush?

Again, it’s a self-serving piece of legislation. It’s a self-serving piece of legislation brought in by an Attorney General who, since almost, I think, the budget…. I think it was the budget measures that actually triggered the unrest in his community, in his riding. Since about then, there have been “Recall the Attorney General” signs in his riding.

Miraculously, eight days before it’s going to start — eight days before it’s able to be triggered by the public for them to do a grassroots campaign — the Attorney General is worried and trying to stifle that.

Now we’re hearing from the Leader of the Third Party, who takes it to even more of the extreme in trying to elicit the image of million-dollar payoffs happening and million-dollar cheques being cut for a recall campaign.

To show just how ridiculous that is, it took that side of the House ten years to be able to extract $20 million out of their handpicked 19 unions. They didn’t get $20 million in a year out of 19 unions. It took them ten years to get the $20 million out of them, and it took those unions 11 years to get the payoff back from the government. So it’s disingenuous to appoint….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, you have to be in your own seat to make any comments.

P. Milobar: It’s totally disingenuous for the Attorney General to continue to say that this is actually about protecting the public from his supporters defending him. This is like we’re in a banana republic right now. This is just bizarre, what this government is bringing forward.

[2:00 p.m.]

We’re in the middle of debating proportional representation on Bill 40. I’m assuming, since the Leader of the Third Party spoke about almost every other type of bill and everything that happened over the last 16 years while talking to Bill 53, unlike the speaker before him, this won’t hurt the sensitivities of the members opposite this time when I talk about Bill 40 for a little bit, like he did earlier in the day.

This is the problem we have. We have Bill 40 which is meant to try to fundamentally change the decision-making process that people might make in a referendum while they’re actually being asked to vote, while they can actively engage in voting. The Attorney General brings forward that to try to change the conversation. Then we hear the member of the Third Party mad that we have the temerity to try to debate that in this House, to try to show to the public how ridiculous this is getting.

Why that’s important is because a lot of the discussion in the communities is about lack of information around proportional representation, lack of what would happen under this system or that system. Well, we know there’s no certainty on what happens in a by-election under proportional representation because the government hasn’t seen fit to tell us what that scenario would look like.

Before they say, “Well, by-elections are rare,” I’ll save them, because I think we might be having a by-election in Nanaimo pretty quickly here, if I’m not mistaken. By-elections actually happen on a fairly regular basis in this House — not every year but fairly regularly. So I think people have the right to know how they would get a member elected in a by-election under prop rep.

Interjection.

P. Milobar: I’ll draw the line for the member that’s confused about how this might be a lack of information for people as well. I see no language in this bill around what happens, for recall, to an appointed member of this Legislature under recall. I see no language under this — what happens to an elected member under recall with proportional representation.

In other words, if this wasn’t such a self-serving rush to try to save one’s own hide, this bill could have come forward more complete post-referendum, knowing what type of electoral system we’d have moving forward for the next little while. But no, there’s a massive rush to try to ram this through.

It is important, because if people are voting predicated on the percentage of votes should equal the percentage of seats and you’re an elected member of this House who loses their seat under recall, that changes the percent of seats in this House. Does the same party just get to reappoint a new person but that party holds the seat? Is there an actual by-election that happens? Instead of appointing 60 people or 50 people to this House, do the party bosses get to hand-select a new person to come in and fill that elected seat?

None of those are in this bill. It’s a rushed bill aimed strictly around serving one’s own interests when it comes to recall — which, again, has never actually been successful. So the fact that there would be this much worry…. Recalls have never, to this point, had the big-money boogeyman behind them that they’re trying to say on this.

Yet I notice that the union loopholes are wide open still in this. The loopholes are wide open in this bill. The loopholes that would allow unions to do exactly as they did in the last municipal election, where they could pay people to not show up to work that day and make sure they were paid and be able to go campaign, are still in existence.

If the Attorney General was really trying to be forthright with everybody here and trying to truly make this a level playing field, if the Leader of the Third Party actually truly would follow through on what his words say with actions around this bill and many other bills, I would be very surprised. Again, it’s 51 pages. This is not about big money. You do not need the 51 pages to clarify the big money. This is 51 pages of trying to make sure that you can self-preserve yourself.

The “six months out before a general election” clause. Now, on the surface, that seems actually quite reasonable. Then I have to listen to the Attorney General introduce this bill.

[2:05 p.m.]

His justification for the six-months-out clause is that for Elections B.C, it’s important for them six months out to be able to focus on an election. Well, imagine if we hadn’t been running a municipal campaign at the same time as trying to get ballots in the mail and a voter guide out for the proportional representation vote how much more focus Elections B.C. could have had during the last municipal election.

According to the Attorney General, it’s pretty difficult for them to do two things at once. I don’t think it is. I think they’re a very professional organization, but the Attorney General certainly seemed to indicate in his speech that Elections B.C. needs a clear six months of nothing else going on to make sure they run an election properly.

Why is that important? I know that in my riding, I got reports and complaints — and I know that in lots of other ridings, we got reports and complaints — that during the municipal election, the Fair Vote volunteers with their third-party advertising were standing in front of polling stations and jamming proportional representation literature in their hands.

It would have been nice, maybe, if Elections B.C. wasn’t split in two directions on an election day when that was happening. But that seemed to be okay for the democratic process. That really followed the spirit and the intent of what we do in the democratic process.

It doesn’t matter that you’re not allowed to have an election sign within 100 metres of a polling station. Let’s stand right at the front steps of the polling station and jam campaign literature for a different referendum in people’s hands, whether they want it or not, and when returning officers come out and ask you to move along, you tell them to leave you alone because you’re standing on public land and it’s your right to stand there.

That’s sure the nice spirit and the intent that was followed through. Unfortunately, Elections B.C. probably didn’t think that was going to actually happen so they didn’t bother to put in firm rules ahead of time to prevent that from happening.

I guess we know that this government has no problem having convenient loopholes that work in favour of what they want to try to do. Just make sure you hammer down with 51 pages on anyone else that might want to try to voice an opinion in contrary.

Now, I’m assuming that the NDP memo telling people that they cannot dissent to them was probably shorter than 51 pages, because that probably wouldn’t be called a memo at that point. I think we’ve seen this government demonstrate already, both internally and externally, that you dare not disagree with them or else.

That’s what this bill is saying. It is very clearly telling people: “Don’t you even bother trying. Don’t bother trying to do something that 26 times has already failed anyway. In fact, we’re so worried that it might be successful, we’re going to make it harder for people.” But the interesting thing….

The Leader of the Third Party touched on this. I found it interesting. They didn’t change the 40 percent threshold for a recall. They kept that the same. In fact, the Leader of the Third Party’s evidence that nothing is being rigged here…. I believe he kept using “stacked deck” and “rigged game.” I assumed he was talking about Bill 40 and the proportional representation bill at that point, but I’m not entirely sure. He was rambling a little bit, and I wasn’t paying total attention, admittedly, to him.

We have a 40 percent threshold in the existing legislation, and in this new legislation we have a 40 percent threshold. The speaker of the Third Party thinks that’s symbolic, that that demonstrates the government’s not trying to hammer down on people’s ability and make this harder than it already is, because they were so generous as to not go to 50 or 60 percent.

I point out that in the Referendum Act that they amended to have this referendum that we’re under, instead of keeping that percentage threshold at 60 percent with a secondary threshold of number of ridings so that the rural people would have an equal voice, they had no problem scaling that percentage right down. Get it down to 50 percent plus one and get rid of regional thresholds.

The same Attorney General had absolutely no problem — and the Leader of the Third Party agreeing — making a proportional representation vote much easier to pass. But when it comes to their own recall legislation, worrying about recall campaigns coming against them, they keep the threshold the same, the same threshold that’s 0 for 26.

One has to wonder: why is that? Why didn’t they just lower that threshold at the same time? Why didn’t they lower the threshold down to 35 percent or 40 percent? Why would that be?

[2:10 p.m.]

They seem to have no problem lowering the threshold to make it easier to get what they would like. Yet when it’s something that they want to try to hinder, when it’s people’s own personal opinions, people in their own neighbourhoods…. Let’s remember that a recall campaign is not some provincewide phenomenon going on at the same time.

When the Leader of the Third Party goes on about people donating millions of dollars to a recall campaign, either he’s totally clueless about what that means in terms of a recall campaign — that it’s one specific riding or two specific ridings — or he’s trying to do exactly as he tries saying we do, accuses us of doing all the time, saying that we’re overexaggerating. Talk about an overexaggeration.

Recall campaigns survive and thrive and, to this point, have not even been successful because they require people going door to door, knocking door to door in a very small geographic area, for the most part, especially for the Attorney General. It’s probably, what, 20 square blocks, his riding. I’m not sure how big it is, but Vancouver–Point Grey can’t be very large compared to Prince George ridings, Kamloops–North Thompson.

It requires that type of initiative. It requires people going out within their own riding and saying: “We’ve had enough of this MLA, regardless of political stripe.” Because of that 40 percent threshold, it requires usually cross-party lines. That’s why it hasn’t been successful anywhere.

The one that came close, the one that people assume may have been successful if it had actually happened, if the member hadn’t resigned ahead of time, which I think is telling…. I think even the member at that point realized what was going to happen. That one was close. That one was because that member, at that time, to the public…. The public, across party lines, felt like a trust had been broken and it was time to get a different MLA.

To try to change this legislation with the amount of crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s that you will need, to be an average person, to not be in contravention of this act and have someone phone and try to make this whole process invalid…. That’s what this bill is really doing. This bill is stifling grassroots people from being able to get together.

There’s a clause in here that says that even if you’re registered and allowed to be fundraising and able to fund a campaign, if you have it in your house…. Well, again, these are internal one-riding-off types of processes. If you have that fundraising event in your house…. You are not allowed to get a donation over $100 from anybody if it’s in your private residence, even though the limit is $1,200.

Talk about the state being worried about what’s going on in someone’s private residence. It doesn’t matter if you mark down their name. It doesn’t matter if you properly account for it all. Your neighbour can’t walk into your house, if you’re in charge of that recall campaign, and hand you a cheque for $101 — not the millions of dollars that the Third Party Leader wants to talk about but $101. You would be in contravention of this act.

I’m not sure. Does the Attorney General want people to stand on corners and be able to hand the cheques back and forth? Is that more preferable? If it’s outside of your house, you’re allowed to take the money, but not inside your house. I thought we were past the days….

Interjection.

P. Milobar: Well, if the member would read his own bill, he would know it’s a $1,200 limit.

I thought we had gone a little further along. I thought, frankly, an Attorney General who used to be the head of B.C. Civil Liberties would be a little less concerned about what people are doing in the privacy of their own home if they’re properly documenting the cheques and the donations or the cash coming in and attributing a name to them. One would think that would be the bigger concern for the Attorney General, the former head of the B.C. Civil Liberties union, not that somebody sitting in their living room with three neighbours happened to get three $200 cheques given to them to try to have a recall campaign against them.

Talk about yet another overreach. We’re seeing that a lot with a lot of their legislation coming through here. All the loopholes they’ve got in here favour their supporters.

[2:15 p.m.]

The Attorney General will have you believe he’s really trying to protect himself from looking like he’s getting too much support in his community, and he doesn’t think that would look good. Well, I can tell the Attorney General that what doesn’t look good is this bill that he’s trying to introduce, with eight days to go before recall campaigns can be initiated.

Then there’s the “no two at the same time.” Now, it’s how you want to look at this. Certainly the Leader of the Third Party has a very rosy picture of it. But the reality is that it would not take much to be able to orchestrate and have, basically, a piece of paper filed saying that there’s a recall campaign action happening but no one actually doing anything about it.

Although the Leader of the Third Party would paint it as, “Could you imagine three different sets of people actively running around trying to get petitions signed,” if they were all working that earnestly for a true recall campaign, I would suggest those groups would figure it out pretty fast, and they would join forces and work together. You would only have one active — one being actioned.

Instead, what this legislation says is that you can’t even let those three parties that are all wanting the same end goal figure it out in the first few days and get together and work towards a common goal. No. What the government is saying to you is that if one of the government supporters — those same groups that the Attorney General is so worried would look like they’re oversupporting him and trying to protect him — wanted to file the paperwork right on day 1, minute 1, it blocks anyone else from starting one.

There is nothing that says they have to actually initiate, lift a finger, do anything to actually move forward on an active recall campaign. It just says no one else is allowed to. It doesn’t take long: a second filing and, boom, the interest and the heat of the moment, the passion people have, starts to die. This is yet another example of this Attorney General, of this Leader of the Third Party trying to game the system for the benefit of making sure that they cling to power. That’s exactly what this does.

Mr. Speaker, you think of the scenario, right now, where you have a House with a one-seat differential. You think of the situation right now with a House where, if the Nanaimo by-election is lost by the government, that creates a whole other dynamic in this House. If there was a successful recall campaign on either side of this House, that changes that dynamic that much again.

The Attorney General, in the middle of a referendum, eight days before recall campaigns become live — even though he has known from day 1 that on the first day of 18 months in, recalls can be initiated — waits until eight days before, after months of going back and forth in front of signs in his own riding indicating there may be a recall coming. I’m not aware of signs in any other riding in the province suggesting recalls are on the way. The only one I’m aware of is in the Attorney General’s.

Now, Oak Bay–Gordon Head…. I don’t live down here, but to hear the extreme ridiculousness of the Leader of the Third Party’s comments, in terms of dollars involved in this, in terms of process around this, one has to wonder if he’s not hearing rumblings in his own riding. Again, a long string of broken promises by the Leader of the Third Party — not to the B.C. Liberals. No. It’s broken promises to his core party members, to his core supporters, to his core people who donate — maybe he’s worried some of those people will suddenly start donating to a recall campaign instead of to his party — and certainly to the broader public of British Columbia.

Let’s not forget about walking away from fundamental promises around proportional representation, which both parties did. They basically were walking away from those promises before the ink was dry, as they were walking out of the Lieutenant-Governor’s house after they got given the keys to government. We don’t have a single ballot, we don’t have a single form of proportional representation to vote, and we certainly did not have the vote during the municipal campaign — all of which was promised in the confidence and supply agreement.

[2:20 p.m.]

Perhaps members of the governing side, who cling to a one-seat advantage right now, with a by-election underway…. They are desperate to hang on to power, and they have a long string of broken promises behind them. Perhaps it is really them that are very worried about the upcoming recall season, as it were, and can see the writing on the wall that, in fact, maybe at some point, 0 and 26 becomes 1 and 26, because even the Cleveland Browns won a football game this year. So at some point, it happens.

This bill guarantees it will never happen. This bill takes what is a long shot to an absolute, and that’s fundamentally wrong. It is totally self-serving. It is totally self-serving for the members bringing this forward and trying to wrap themselves in all of righteousness and all that’s good in the world by saying that if we dare to point out the flaws of what they’re trying to do, if we dare to question their motives, we’re somehow evil and trying to support Dr. Evil–type characters coming in and trying to rig an election to overthrow one person in a seat. That has never happened in the past. I don’t see why it would start happening now.

A 51-page bill is complete overkill. It is not protecting people from people coming in and writing phantom million-dollar cheques. What this bill does, though, is it prevents you from having your neighbour come into your house and offer you a $100 cheque.

D. Barnett: I rise today to speak to Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act. We, as British Columbians, have a lot to be proud of when it comes to our democracy. Our electoral system has delivered a peaceful transition of power since we entered Confederation as the sixth province in 1871. We have elected stable governments. We have reflected the will of most people. And we built a prosperous and peaceful place that is the envy of the world.

I’ve been sitting, listening to this debate now since it began earlier today, and I listened to the Leader of the Third Party in shock. We are debating a bill, a bill that is supposed to make life easier and better and fairer for processes. It does nothing of the sort. I listened to the Leader of the Third Party condemn this side of the House — myself, my colleagues and a government that worked for 16 years and made British Columbia the place it is today.

I come from rural British Columbia, a place where we have to work twice as hard as those from an urban centre do, where we have to travel distances that urban centres have no concept of. If you’ve ever gone door-knocking in rural British Columbia, you may go ten miles between houses.

The recall initiative is something that I believe is fair and democratic for all of us, even though some members’ ridings could be 20 blocks, with 100,000 people, and some of ours are 44,000 square kilometres, with 40,000 people. So we are not asking for any special concessions. Fair play is fair play.

But why now is this bill before this House? We’ve had 15 months. A bill was put before this House at the beginning of the session, after the last election, to take big money out of politics from unions, from corporations, from individuals. It was also put forward for local governments. There was election reform. I don’t believe there was enough reform, but there was election reform. So why now, a few days before the legal time is up to recall an MLA if you’re not happy?

[2:25 p.m.]

To me, this creates a conflict of interest for the minister. And that is not democracy. Fair play is fair play. And we must always remember democracy is fair play. We must remember that in this House.

We built a prosperous and peaceful place, as I said before, that’s the envy of the world, yet we are in the midst of one of the greatest bait-and-switch programs we have seen in our political system. Though we keep hearing promises and policies aimed at fixing our democracy, every step has brought an erosion, in my opinion, of our democracy.

For instance, that side of the House said they’re getting big money out of municipal politics, as I mentioned, yet big money remained, with union-endorsed candidates enjoying the support of union-paid staff. That doesn’t happen in rural British Columbia, does it? In rural British Columbia, we are independent people. We go out there, and we get ourselves elected in local government elections. We don’t have interference — not as yet. I hope it never happens.

I ran for mayor. I was mayor for 17 years. The most I ever spent on an election was $800, and I spent that out of my own pocket. Normally, in municipal elections in rural British Columbia, the reason you don’t need a lot of money is because you do your job. You talk to the people. You meet them on the street. You meet them in the Safeway. You meet them at the gas station.

Right now British Columbians are voting in a referendum on proportional representation that proclaims it’s bringing more democracy to town and that somehow people’s votes will count more and be better reflected. I still can’t imagine how that is going to happen under what is on the table.

I had a session last Friday night. One of my colleagues came up, and we had a debate with the yes side and no side. Very interestingly, one of the local politicians who was elected for local government and just went through an election was on the yes side. She stood up and said: “Well, 40 percent of the population should not be government; 40 percent of the vote isn’t enough.” So I said to this lady: “You just went through a local government regional district election, and you got elected with 10 percent.” Ten percent of that area went out and voted, and that person won by 7 percent.

It seems we have two or three different systems. It all depends on who you are, where you are and what is believed in. Instead of more democracy for people, this government and its friends in the Third Party are just delivering more power to the political parties.

The Leader of the Third Party, as my colleague said a few minutes ago, his followers and…. I had lots in my riding. They believed in what they were sold before the election: “We’re going to look after getting rid of Site C. We’re not going to have LNG. We’re not going to have this. We’re not going to have that.” Well, talk is cheap; action is not.

For all the talk of making every vote count, the reality is that the real choices are being….

Deputy Speaker: Member, let’s talk about Bill 53.

D. Barnett: Mr. Speaker, I am.

Well before election day and by a small, inside party headquarters…. At least, that is what we have to guess from experiences we’ve seen elsewhere in the world. That’s because the actual mechanics of PR in B.C. have yet to be revealed. What that side of the House calls more democracy, I call an erosion of democracy.

[2:30 p.m.]

This bill has many flaws. It has some really valid points, but it has many, many flaws. As I’ve heard from the other side over and over again, and I heard it just a while ago today, we’ve got to talk about HST. I recall when HST was put on the table, as I was an elected MLA. I recall the outcry from many people. Of course, there was a referendum. We got rid of HST.

To change this recall legislation at this time and with many of the changes in the wording, to me, it is wrong — wrong timing and a lot of wrong words.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

I think what might be a good idea when there’s something that is of this much importance on a bill like this to the people of British Columbia…. The people really do like the recall. They like the idea of it. They like the concept of it. I’ve never heard anybody say they don’t.

When you go to change it, I think this should be a public discussion. I think having an all-party committee, if we’re going to make changes on something this important, would certainly give more credibility to it, more input. Probably, we would be looking after the interests of the people of British Columbia even better with an all-party committee.

This here legislation proposed is made, once again, in one person’s office. It is made without input. It is made without public input that I keep hearing about over and over and over again is the most important thing in the world. I believe it is very important to have public input and especially on things as important as this.

With MLAs selected…. I just heard over here 80,000 people had input. Not to the recall legislation. I don’t believe anybody in the public had input into this particular piece of legislation. If they did, please tell me who it was.

The party insiders will choose. They may even choose themselves. It is absolutely undemocratic at this time. I will say over and over and over again that I believe this is a conflict of interest. When the person who put this bill on the table may be recalled…. There are signs out there. I’ve seen signs in the newspaper. That’s all I’ve seen. We could all be on recall. So be it, if we are. But if you are, then, basically, a bill should not be on this floor at this time.

I’m quite shocked at some of the comments I’ve heard from across the room. I believe every MLA does a job to the best of his ability. I believe MLAs work very hard for their constituents. The insults that I listened to over here from the Third Party Leader on the TV today totally, totally are unacceptable to anybody. We care about our constituents. We care about each and every one of them. When I had to listen to what I listened to today, boy, sometimes recall may be better than I thought it was in the first place.

That side of the House is claiming they’re cleaning things up and bringing rules in line with all of the other changes they have made. Well, it’s like they got rid of big money while letting union-paid activists work on municipal campaigns. If we’re going to clean house, you best do it completely, not just in your interest.

As I’ve said before, British Columbians are proud of our Recall and Initiative Act as it is now. If you don’t believe it, maybe talk to some of your constituents.

[2:35 p.m.]

Every British Columbian has the right to challenge an MLA and have them removed from office if enough people in their constituency agree with it. That is in the existing act. But that right is being restricted by this government in a bill tabled by a minister who is apparently being targeted by recall. In my opinion, he’s using his power to change the rules in his favour in the middle of the game. That, to me, is not acceptable. It is a conflict of interest.

It is to be expected. After all, it is the same minister who is portrayed as the government’s squeaky-clean independent arbitrator of electoral reform while at the same time acting as a fierce and formidable proponent for scrapping our electoral system. Shame. It’s like asking Colonel Sanders to be the independent arbiter of a vote on imposing vegetarianism. Can you believe it?

If this bill passes, MLAs will only be subject to a single recall campaign. Once one recall is attempted, there can be no more during that term of office, which is totally unacceptable. Four years is a long time if an MLA is not doing what he should be doing as an MLA — him or her — and their constituents should have the right to recall under the existing legislation.

There’s always room for change — always. But it should be done by all parties on a situation like this, and this is my opinion. I think it would be great if there was an all-party committee looking at legislation that is as important as this — so important to the citizens of British Columbia, not to the people in this House. If you’ve ever been threatened with recall, it doesn’t give you much sleep at night, believe you me. I’ve been there. I wasn’t recalled, but I was threatened.

We never want to shut out constituents with legitimate concerns, yet this bill, in my opinion, would be an erosion of our democracy, the most important thing we have in Canada, in British Columbia, in our homes and in our place of work that we have today.

We live in a world full of struggle, strife. You take a look at the countries around the world and what a mess some of them are in. You take a look at the sadness, the things that happened in Pittsburgh here last week. It is heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking. We need a better world. We need a more inclusive world. I keep hearing from the other side that that’s what they’re doing. But this is not being inclusive.

I won’t even raise the spectre of a fake recall being held just to pre-empt an actual recall from being launched. That could happen under this bill. I mean, with all of these so-called democratic enhancements happening, one can’t imagine an anti-democratic move going that far, but I don’t know.

This bill also seeks to lop six months off the window for recall — the six months before a scheduled general election. Again, this is reducing democracy and limiting the tools available to citizens. It does not matter, in this debate, that in 26 tries of recall, only one single recall has succeeded in its goal. What does matter is that the opportunity for recall is there.

Citizens have the right to recall. Our democratic power rests with the people, all the people — not just some people but all the people. This will be a sad legacy for this House and this government if this bill passes in the manner in which it has been presented.

[2:40 p.m.]

T. Shypitka: Thank you to my colleague from Cariboo-Chilcotin. Well done.

I appreciate the opportunity to rise today and speak to the House on Bill 53, the Recall Initiative Amendment Act, 2018, or as my colleague from Kamloops–North Thompson more affectionately knows it, the self-preservation act.

Before I start, I want to give some credit out there. I want to lighten the mood a little bit and give some credit to the dining room staff downstairs. I had a great lunch today. I was in the hospitality industry for 25 years, and you know, we kind of take that dining room for granted sometimes. I don’t go there enough. But for the quality they put out and for the price they put out — and the staff have always got a big smile — I think they need some credit down there. In ten minutes or less, the meal is out, and it’s great.

I want to give a special shout-out to Amanda Cootes. She’s the hostess with the mostest downstairs. She’s always got a smile on her face. She knows your name. I thought I was lucky enough to be the only person that she knew, but she knows probably every single member in this place, so she’s got quite a memory, and she’s a great person. I just thought I’d give a quick shout-out to her.

On to the act at hand, and that’s the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act, 2018. It is truly amazing, as I stand here about to speak and debate on it, that the other side isn’t presenting any speakers. It’s their bill. It’s their act. Yet they’re silent. We hear some chirping from time to time, and that’s to be expected, but the fact that they’re not even speaking to their own bill, to me, just speaks volumes on how much it’s actually being embraced on that side.

I don’t think it is. I think for the most part…. There are some parts of the act that I can agree with, but for the most part of this act, it’s an erosion of our democracy. It’s coming at a very timely point right now, and it’s very suspect on those things. So I think the fact that nobody is speaking to it speaks volumes.

To start off, I would just like to say that I’m proud to be a British Columbian, proud to be a Canadian. There’s lots to be proud of when we live in this great democratic society that we have. We have some of the best scholastic achievements in the world. We have some of the best health outcomes in the world. Our livability is among the best.

We also have a good choice on who we elect as our representatives. This has been going on for over 140 years. It’s part of the reason why I raise a family here, and it’s part of the reason why I feel secure and stable in this society. This is the key to the debate — that it’s a fair, representative choice of our voices to this House which gives us the prosperity that we have and the lifestyle that we enjoy.

Since this government has been formed, this government here, in particular — the NDP-Green coalition with a minority government by the slimmest of margins — has all been based on a political agenda. Right from the get-go, an agenda was formed by pen and paper and a backroom deal between the Green Party and the NDP, and what came out of this document would be the binding glue between the two parties that they have a mutual understanding on how this government is to be run. The document, as everybody knows, is called the confidence and supply agreement between the B.C. Green caucus and the B.C. New Democratic caucus.

As I said, from the get-go there’s been an agenda set, and this kind of speaks to Bill 53 and where we’re going with this. When we talk about the confidence and supply agreement, we see the number one condition of a vote or a referendum on proportional representation. I know that some other members spoke to this, and there is a connection between that and Bill 53. There’s no doubt in my mind.

You would think that when these two partners got together and they were hashing out deals for one another and how this partnership was going to work, a referendum on proportional representation would fall, maybe, lower down the list. You’d think that some of the ones on the top of the list would be, maybe, stopping the Site C project or the elimination of fracking or, you know, embracing the thought of an LNG resource to British Columbia. It would be some of those top priorities of this confidence and supply agreement. But no. It was all on proportional representation.

[2:45 p.m.]

Bill 53 is an extension of that agenda-setting and manipulating of the system for the endgame, which is, of course, proportional representation — giving life to extreme sides of the political spectrum that can’t win any other way. Bill 53 is an obvious attempt to change the rules to rig the system, the political outcomes, plain and simple. I’ll explain why.

We’ve seen some very rushed and timely decisions come about from this government — the referendum I just spoke of on PR. This won’t be implemented until 2021, yet there’s a big mad dash to get this rammed through and get it done in an untimely manner. It’s a flawed process, with not a lot of consultation from the public. We’re seeing the same thing with this bill.

Why is this bill coming forward right now? We’re literally on the eve of the recall period in our province, which is 18 months after the general election — literally days away. I’ll give you the definition of “recall” from the Elections B.C. site that I found. It’s interesting to read. It says:

“Recall is a process through which a registered voter can petition to remove a Member of the Legislative Assembly from office. A voter can only petition to recall the member for the electoral district in which they are registered to vote. The voter must collect signatures from more than 40 percent of voters eligible to sign the petition in the electoral district. Applications for recall petitions cannot be submitted to Elections B.C. during the 18 months after the member was elected. In Canada, the recall process is unique to B.C.” — we’re the only province to have this process — “No other province or territory has a system in place for removing elected representatives from office between elections.”

I found that interesting, and I thought: why would we be the only ones, in B.C., that have it? I believe it’s a fair process. I mean, if we have a choice or if a representative that we’ve elected maybe is dishonest or does something wrong, I think we should have a process to get rid of that person. I’m okay with the legislation. But I went on further.

This seems interesting that B.C. is the only province in Canada to have such an act, an act the other side is demanding is obsolete. They’re saying we’ve got to change. We’ve got to get rid of it, or we’ve got to put ridiculous caps on it. We’ve got to dumb this thing down a little bit. Money that we’ve seen in the past from corporations alike….

I pressed on, and I read a little bit further.

“The Chief Electoral Officer has approved 26 recall petitions since the Recall and Initiative Act came into force in 1995. Six of those petitions were returned to Elections B.C. for verification. Of the six, five did not have enough valid signatures and one was halted during the verification process because the member resigned.”

I thought to myself: it’s a pretty rare event that a recall would ever be successful. Technically, it’s never been done before. One MLA resigned during the verification, possibly knowing the jig was up or he didn’t have a chance. Whatever the reason was, the MLA decided to resign. Nevertheless, a recall’s never been technically successful. It’s never been done before. So one could argue that a recall is extremely rare.

The second part that amazed me was the fact that this recall act came into play in 1995. Now, I don’t have a political science degree, like the Minister of Advanced Education does, but I’m pretty certain that 1995 would have been during the NDP’s reign of terror of that decade. I did a quick fact check, and it showed I was right. So this is an NDP piece of legislation that was brought to us 23 years ago, and now, all of a sudden, it doesn’t fit their agenda anymore. Somehow, something that they brought forward and they thought was a great idea now doesn’t suit their means.

This is part of the manipulation — I like to use that word — of this process, which is saying: “Let’s change the rules midstride, because we don’t like what the outcome could be, so we’re going to do this.” It’s disingenuous. It’s dishonest in my opinion. I think that’s why we’re so passionate about this bill right now, and that’s why we’re having all of our members come up to speak to it. That’s probably the reason why nobody on the other side is speaking to it.

Why is there an urgency to change an NDP piece of legislation that rarely ever gets used and has never once produced a victim — or a product of the process, I guess, would be a better way to say it?

[2:50 p.m.]

My life, and I’m sure everyone’s life here in the Legislature, can understand the phrase that timing is everything. We see it from time to time, and we use that phrase all the time. I want to go back a little bit. One of my favourite heroes growing up was a hockey goalie called Ken Dryden. I’m a Montreal Canadiens fan, and I always admired No. 29. He’s a great guy.

I’ll just read a little something here, just a little brief thing that will kind of highlight why timing is important to Bill 53. Late in the 1960s and in the early 1970s, the Montreal Canadiens had no room for underperformers on their team. On the famous club’s roster, there were enough talented and highly experienced players to put together several teams. Like all top-notch teams, the old guard gradually retired, and the team had to be reinforced with young players, but rookies spent as much time in the press box as on the ice.

In the spring of 1971, Dryden was called up from a farm club. Actually — I might interrupt there — he was brought up from the farm club from out east. It was a guy, a goalie from Cranbrook, a town that I represent, that actually had the head goalie’s position. Ken Dryden was the backup. They were in the Memorial Cup or in some big tournament, and the head goalie, the guy from Cranbrook, couldn’t go, so they sent Ken Dryden. That’s another timely situation. This guy in Cranbrook used to always talk about it all the time, how he could have won four Stanley Cups in a row, but that’s another discussion.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Ken Dryden was brought up. There was an injury. He was placed in the game during the playoffs. He won six games against Boston. They went on to win the Stanley Cup. Not only that, he went on to win another three more after that. He won several Conn Smythe and Vezina trophies, and the rest is history. But it was all about timing.

I think that’s what Bill 53 speaks to. This is about timing. It’s not about what people want. I don’t remember anybody in my riding saying: “You know what? We should really revisit that Recall and Initiative Amendment Act.” I never heard that once. I don’t think that was a platform for anybody on the other side, yet here we are, making a big push. All of a sudden it’s a big deal to get these restrictions in place and these limits and these caps in place.

We talk about timing. Why is it now? Well, as we said and as other members on this side of the House have said, we’re right on the eve of a recall. There are a couple of situations I think we all know of where a recall is possible, and it doesn’t suit the other side of the House — plain and simple. I don’t know if anybody can deny that. I’m sure they may. They’ve got an opportunity to say that, and I don’t see any takers on that side. Maybe that’s the reason why we’re hearing silence from over there.

It’s about transparency. You know, I hear big money: “We’re getting big money out of it.” Well, we’re looking at this bill. We’re seeing that this isn’t about trimming down a little bit and making it better for all British Columbians, to have a fair, even playing field. We’re talking about drastic caps and drastic reductions: a $5,000 cap on third-party and a $1,200 individual cap. I mean, $5,000? If I had a recall in my area — I hope I never do, as long as I’m the MLA there, but it could possibly happen — if that was the voice of the people, then I would honour and respect that. But $5,000 — I would say that half that money would be taken up just driving around my riding.

I don’t even have the largest riding here. The member for Kamloops–North Thompson or the other members there from the Peace region — their ridings are the size of several small European countries. How far is $5,000 going to get to do a legitimate recall? It’s absurd.

This is an obvious statement from the other side going forward, saying: “We need to stop something from happening.” They see something on the horizon that they don’t like, and that’s what’s happening with this bill, this act. The big-money thing is smoke and mirrors, in my opinion. The leader of the Green Party says he sat here and he’s heard the “stacked deck” and a “rigged game” over and over.

Has a member ever gone through Hansard and seen how many times the catch phrase of “big money” is used on that side? Over and over again. It’s their national anthem, it appears. They say it over and over.

[2:55 p.m.]

It’s a trigger to dumb things down, to make it simple and to say: “Yeah, I don’t like big money.” They never say “union money”; they say “big corporate donations” all the time. Never once have I ever heard them say: “We’ve got to get rid of this union money.” That’s where we live right now.

Now, this is not a one-off with this government. This Bill 53, as I said, is in an ongoing pattern. We’ve been seeing it here since the coalition between the NDP and the Greens. We see these glitzy catchphrases, like “big money,” all over the place. We’ve heard, “Every vote counts,” even though that’s the farthest thing in the House. We’ve debated that on this side, so I won’t go into it. These dumbing-downs and these simplifications of something that’s more complex and has more going on in the background are insulting to British Columbians. It’s pitting British Columbians against one another.

People are getting mixed messages, misrepresentation, misinformation. They’re hearing: “We’ve got to get rid of big money.” Well, yes. There have got to be limits in place, and we’ve got to make it fair for everybody. But to say that this bill that’s being put forward is an attempt to stop big corporate money is absolutely insane, in my opinion. It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s about an agenda; it’s about power. It’s about stopping a process they don’t want to see happen — plain and simple.

We’re days away from a recall being allowed to kick in across the province. There are a few recalls right now that are gaining some public support, and I dare say that the other side doesn’t want to see that get off the ground. That’s why we’re here right now, but now they want it changed, because it suits their agenda. To be honest, this is shocking, but it’s also disappointing.

I’ll go into a few little things that this amendment act highlights. It removes the possibility that an MLA be subject to more than one recall petition at the same time. Why is that important? Why wouldn’t we want to have more than one petition on any one MLA at any one given time? There are lots of reasons.

Interjection.

T. Shypitka: The member’s got lots of answers on the other side, and I invite him to stand up and debate that after I sit down. It’s his right to do that. I’m looking forward to the member’s response after I sit down.

One could say it’s not to convolute the process, but one could also say it’s to block the process. If I were first in queue to put in a petition on an MLA for a recall, I might not be very motivated. I might not be too excited for the recall to reach everyone, and it might block the person that really has a legitimate petition to put forward, a genuine concern that this member has not done the right things and has dishonoured or disgraced their constituency.

The fact that this blocking, I would say…. I would call it a block — pure and simple. To remove this…. That there’s only one petition that can be allowed at any one given time on any one given member is, in my opinion, controlling at the very least, disingenuous for certain. I can’t understand why that would be one of the pieces that they’d want to amend. It opens the doors to false-flag recalls, campaigns to prevent a real one from launching. That’s what I’m saying with that.

The second piece here applies, to recall campaigns, the same spending and advertising rules the NDP introduced to the Election Act for general elections — for example, the ban on corporate and union donations — and makes the $1,200 cap apply to recall campaigns, so that it will be very hard to raise sufficient money. I went into that a little bit already — $1,200 per individual, $5,000 per third-party campaign. Four people could literally drive a campaign, and that’s it, no other money — $5,000 for a two-month campaign.

I mean, I come from a small town. If I buy advertising space in the Townsman, our weekly paper, it costs about $1,200 just for a quarter-page ad. I would say it was probably more like $2,500 for a full-page ad.

[3:00 p.m.]

For two full-page ads in a two-month period, to get people educated, to get the advertisement out and to collect and serve all this data…. I don’t think anybody here could say that’s acceptable. I don’t think anybody could make $5,000 stretch that far. It’s absolutely crazy.

It also requires third-party advertisers to register and disclose their funding sources. Okay, I can go along with that. It’s got to be equal on both sides. As long as that’s the way it is, that’s fine with me.

Like I said, it establishes a $5,000-value cap for petition period recall advertising for third parties. Once again, in municipal elections, I know candidates that ran as councillors that spent more than $5,000 on municipal elections. We’ve also heard in this last municipal election, there was lots of help and volunteers that helped a lot of these municipal candidates. Some of them were sponsored by unions.

Why does that not apply? Why is that one set of rules, and here’s another set of rules? Because it doesn’t suit the agenda at hand is the answer.

It brings in significantly more disclosure requirements for spending, which is fine, but a lot more, which bogs down the system and makes people disinterested to what they have to put into a campaign that’s very rarely successful. As a matter of fact, it’s never succeeded, ever, in British Columbia before. It creates another way to rule a recall campaign that was unsuccessful, by the CEO, of finding a spending disclosure violation materially affected the outcome, thus setting aside the outcome.

Volunteer contributions are not considered contributions in this act…. So unlike the municipal elections…. You can have volunteer contributions, and they don’t go towards the $5,000 cap. Those are over and above. It’s goodwill — I guess you’d call it — or in-kind contributions. But we have seen through the municipal elections that a lot of organized labour is participating in these elections. I dare say that they would participate in a recall.

We’re not making things equal. We’re not making things level. We’re stacking it. We’re addressing an agenda that this side does not want to address. It’s very unfair that the people of British Columbia are getting forced into this again.

I think that is almost it — just to re-summarize, I guess. We live in a great democracy. It’s been around since 1871 here, in British Columbia. We’ve had a really stable government. We’ve had the best outcomes in the world in many different ways and the best livability anywhere, built a prosperous and peaceful place. We’re the envy of the world.

Yet we are in the midst of one of the greatest bait-and-switch programs we’ve seen in our political system. But we keep hearing promises and policies aiming at fixing our democracy. Every step taken has brought an erosion of our democracy. For instance, that side of the House said that we’re getting big money out of municipal politics. That hasn’t happened. That big money remains, with union-endorsed candidates enjoying the support of union-paid staff. Actions fail to line up with words.

Right now British Columbians are voting in a referendum on proportional representation that proclaims it’s bringing more democracy to town, that somehow people’s votes will count more and be better reflected. But instead of more democracy for the people, this government and its friends in the Third Party are delivering more power to political parties. We see that in the PR. It’s a party-based system rather than a voter-based system.

We’re seeing it here with this act, where we’re taking away choices and ways to do recalls and we’re lowering the bar to the minimum. Like I said, $5,000 goes nowhere. They talk about big money. They’re not talking about big money; they’re just talking about making it better for them so they can avoid something they don’t want to see.

I guess more than anything, I just want to say…. I’ve said this time and time again. I’m a very balanced person. I’m not as partisan as some. I like to see fair process. I like to see things run in a good way for all British Columbians. But I see this bill as not one of those ways.

[3:05 p.m.]

I have family. I have friends, young children and aging parents. All we want is a fair and democratic process. We’ve seen a bill come forward here. We saw an act that’s in place now that was brought in, in 1995, by the NDP party. Now we’re seeing them switch the rules.

They want to take it away. It served them in the ’90s, and now it’s not serving them in 2018. With eight days or so before the recall can kick in, they want to change it back. I think people…. You know, we talk about transparency. This is about as smoke and mirrors as you can get.

For all of these reasons, I do not support this act at all, in any way, shape or form.

S. Gibson: It’s a privilege for me to speak to Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act.

I just want to begin with a couple of little anecdotes that I think put into perspective my attitude to this act. I want to acknowledge the good presentation just a moment ago by the member for Kootenay East, who provided some excellent detail and some response. Good job.

My wife and I were travelling a few years ago on a tour bus in a country where they’re kind of a one-party state. The tour guide said to us: “When you have an election, you find out that evening who gets elected. In our country, we find out last year.”

Another time I was visiting a country in Africa. I won’t name the country, but my impression was that it was a democracy. It seemed to have some democratic ideals. That was my perception at least, as specious as it was. I put on the radio in the evening. They had some kind of rock music on, and at midnight, the newsreader came on. The first story was that the leader of that country was wishing happy birthday to the President of North Korea. Now, I was struck by the fact that it wasn’t a democracy at that moment.

Why do I bring that up now? The reason I do that is because I treasure the precious nature of democracy and how quickly it can be diminished, how quickly it can be diluted. I might mention that this is my 38th year in elected office. When I was 28 and first elected to council in Matsqui, which later on amalgamated with Abbotsford, in 1995, the next youngest member of Matsqui council was a fellow by the name of Peter Dueck, who has since passed away. He was Minister of Health here in this province and sat in this Legislature for many years. He was the next youngest. He was 56. I was half his age.

If you think that I treasure democracy, if you think I value it, you’d be correct. It’s why I’m concerned about the general trend that this government is taking, both with proportional representation, which I’m sure we’ll be discussing again….

We’ve had an excellent discourse around this place on proportional representation. Interestingly, the public is very quickly wising up to the perils of proportional representation, but that’s for another discussion.

The democratic ideals that I bring to this place, I think, make me very suspicious when a government starts tampering with legislation that affects democracy. Democracy’s quite a fragile thing. It doesn’t take much to lose it. So I want to point out, for the interest of the viewers, the citizens of our province, that recall was something quite unique when it came up in the early 1990s. In fact, as has been enumerated, British Columbia is the only province in Canada with recall.

[3:10 p.m.]

My strong suspicion is that if this was today, this government would be afraid of recall legislation. I believe that. They’re already tampering with it — changing the rules, messing with it. Because they want to make it better? I don’t think so.

I kind of did a little research and found the origins. You know what? It’s kind of exciting to see the genesis of recall. What party brought up the idea of recall? Does anybody know? Social Credit. Social Credit brought up the idea of recall. They brought it forward, and initiative, and in the 1991 general election, it was a part of the election process. Here’s something exciting. It was approved by 81 percent. People wanted recall. People like grassroots democracy. There’s a passion for it in our province.

For myself, coming out of local government…. Many of us have. Some of us have been…. The member for Penticton was the mayor. We’ve got the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, who was the mayor of Kamloops, and many others on both sides of the House. We bring that passion. We’ve got ex–school trustees as well. That passion for grassroots democracy is what we’re really talking about today.

Eighty-one percent. Now, it was a part of that election. Which government brought in recall and initiative legislation? Which one was it? NDP, yeah — the precursor to the current government, this temporary government that’s here right now. Later on it was adopted. Mike Harcourt was the Premier then, and I think that could be a part of his legacy at the time. So recall is grassroots democracy.

There have been concerns around here, laments, that this government is trying to politicize democracy. The best example, of course, is the proportional representation discussion and act. Everybody on this side of the House is standing up for the public by saying we don’t want to politicize this vote.

In the previous two times, ’05 and ’09, the citizens’ assembly was non-partisan, and it worked very well. Now it’s run out of the Attorney General’s office and the cabinet. No wonder the public is suspicious. The level of cynicism is high.

My daughter, who just moved to the Chilliwack riding, and her husband are so suspicious of politics. They’re so cynical when I talk to them. They’ve known me, of course, my whole life being in politics, and they’re so cynical. Well, a part of their cynicism relates to the kinds of acts that this government is trying to pull with the proportional representation and now tampering with something that’s been around for years.

The Recall and Initiative Amendment Act…. Don’t tamper with democracy. It will flourish if you leave it alone. Let the public have their involvement. The public can make their decision. This government assumes that the public is not very smart. “We’re going to have to guide them. We’re going to dictate what they want.” On our side of the House, we’re freedom-oriented. We’re a free enterprise party. We trust the people. We trust them. This government is all about social designs, social construction. “We’re going to run your life.” Here are some examples of that. It’s kind of a shame, in a way. It’s kind of a shame.

Now, what on earth are they scared about? The member from Kamloops made some excellent points about recall. Of 26 attempts, only one was marginally successful because the MLA resigned before it could finally proceed.

What’s the suspicion? What’s the concern? Surprising. All of this excitement. Look at this document. I’ve read through this. How many pages? Forty-seven pages to correct something that’s really not a problem? Talk about inefficient. This is a very inefficient government, to have this huge document, 47 pages, for something that nobody has really complained about.

[3:15 p.m.]

Back to proportional representation for a moment, because these are allied. In my five years as an MLA for the Abbotsford-Mission riding, I’ve never had one person phone me and say: “You know what? How about a third proportional representation vote? Let’s get one of those going.” Never had that call.

Never had a call about this either. This is government politicians taking the initiative, hanging out and saying: “Hey, how about this? This would be a good idea. Let’s introduce this.” Messing with democracy.

Now, the lack of success of recall should encourage us to realize that it’s difficult. You’ve got to have 40 percent of the folks that voted in the previous election, and you’ve got to do it over 60 days. It’s tough. But that doesn’t deter this government from tampering with it, changing it. The member for Kootenay East had some of those details. I won’t go over those again.

We know that. This government gives the impression that they’re nervous. They’re scared. They’re worried. They’re anxious. Why could that be? Is there something that they know that we don’t know on this side of the House? Is something looming just below the surface? It’s going to bubble up and take out somebody here. We don’t know how many, but I think there’s a fear.

There’s an angst over there, and I have some sympathy. I get it. When you’re nervous, you sometimes act strangely. I see that. It’s okay. We understand over here. We’re pretty empathetic.

They’ve reduced the number of days for the recall. They’ve changed that six months. You have to wait for the year and a half. They’ve changed that. Only one recall per member per term. Why is that? What could possibly be the reason for doing that? Fear. Fear is sweeping like a river over that side of the House. It’s almost tangible. You can almost see it.

Hey, you remember that movie 101 Dalmatians and the lady and that pink cloud that followed her? Remember that? Why do I think of that? I don’t know. It’s reminiscent, I guess.

Now, the question I would ask myself, as a fan of democracy, as someone who’s been elected for a couple terms here and there…. My question always is: is this furthering democracy? Is it making democracy more accessible and more understandable to the average person? What’s the answer? The answer is no. Not.

I would love to be able to listen in on some of these discussions before they come to this House. I think I would be shocked at the high level of partisanship and not caring for the public. We need to protect the interests of the public — just the average person who says: “I’m going to vote.” Protect them.

When the Vancouver Sun wrote an article about recall when it came up originally in 1994, this was the headline, and this is very profound: “This law would provide voters power to fire politicians.” Whoa. That’s pretty heavy. That’s very heavy.

Most people that run for elected office are defeated, right? In my community, in Mission, 19 people ran for six seats. In Abbotsford, 18 people ran for eight seats. So you can tell that most people are defeated. Then a bunch of others ran for mayor and school board, etc. You know what? That is healthy. In democracy, there are winners, and there are the vanquished. There are victors and the vanquished.

[3:20 p.m.]

This government is trying to compromise that by messing with democratic ideals, first-past-the-post, by introducing proportional representation, which allows the vanquished to have access to MLA rolls. We know that. Appointed. This is going to be very confusing, too, with this legislation — very confusing, right? Now we’re blurring who’s winning and who’s losing. This government is tampering with that process.

Now they’re claiming to get big money out of campaigns, and we heard this earlier from some of our colleagues, but they’re still allowing all kinds of folks to help out. There are lots of things going on here just below the surface, like the metaphor of the river that looks really calm. But don’t go swimming in that river, because you’ll get sucked in by that undertow. There’s an undertow here.

I’m disappointed that this government is tampering significantly with democracy. They’re going in the wrong direction. It’s very partisan. It’s very self-serving. Democracy is not being served. I am totally opposed to Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act.

L. Throness: I want to begin today…. Just for my constituents who may be watching, I’m speaking to Bill 53, which is the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act. That is, it will amend the existing Recall and Initiative Act.

I want to start with a bit of an historical retrospective, because I went to Ottawa with an MP, a Member of Parliament named Chuck Strahl, in January of 1994. He was a member of the Reform Party of Canada, which was a new party, and we were extremely idealistic at that time. We talk about a $1,200 limit on donations today. The Reform Party inched forward on $5, $10, $25 and $50 donations. It was not a movement of the intelligentsia, of the higher-ups in our culture. It was a grassroots movement of ordinary people. As such, it was highly idealistic.

I have before me 63 Reasons to Support the Reform Party of Canada, a pamphlet that was produced in 1994. It had all sorts of things in it — things like balancing the budget, cutting the size and role of government and cutting subsidies to business and Crown corporations. Getting rid of the GST was one. MP pensions, pay and perks.

Federal Reform members were true to their word, and they gave up a lot. For instance, Preston Manning gave up his pension and never got it back. He gave up the keys to the car that he was allowed and didn’t go to Stornoway, where he was entitled to live. I always think that Preston is one of the great men of Canadian politics — unrecognized and often maligned by the higher-ups in our culture.

Two of the things, numbers 4 and 5 of those 63 reasons to vote Reform…. Number 4 was citizens’ initiatives. Reformers believe that Canadians should be able to put questions to a national referendum by submitting a citizens’ initiative petition signed by 3 percent of Canada’s eligible voters. The fifth was recall. Reformers believe that constituents should have the means to remove MPs who lose the confidence or betray the trust of the people, and replace them in a by-election. So they were very idealistic.

Of course, Preston Manning ran the Reform Party. Preston Manning was the son of Ernest Manning. Ernest Manning was a minister in the government of Bill Aberhart, who was the founder of Social Credit in Canada, which has an illustrious political history, beginning in Alberta. In 1936, the Social Credit Party passed a Recall Act. But the very next year, Bill Aberhart repealed that legislation. Why was that? It was because a petition was circulated in his own riding.

So you see, even in idealistic people like Bill Aberhart and Social Credit and Ernest Manning — great people, wonderful people — the tendency to protect yourself from recall is very strong. I’m going to get back to that as we continue to speak.

I want to talk for a moment about the idea of recall in general. Of course, as a former member of the Reform Party of Canada, the ideal of local accountability, the idea that if an MLA does something that’s so outrageous that the people of the constituency do not feel they can wait until a general election to kick out the guy…. They can take action. They can put together a petition. They can ask the Legislature to force a by-election and kick out that MLA.

[3:25 p.m.]

What constituents are saying in a recall petition is: “You no longer represent us. You no longer reflect our interests. We disagree with you so profoundly that we’re going to remove you right now and elect someone who will more accurately mirror our interests.”

The first recall legislation in B.C. was brought in, in 1995. They decided to do so — the NDP decided to do so — because they decided to be bound by the 1991 referendum, which was held, by the way, during a general election, when referenda should be held, not in a stand-alone mail-in ballot. The first recall legislation was brought in by the NDP, who declared that they would be bound by the Social Credit referendum of 1991.

I think the concept is good. I would point out that the Reform Party of Canada gathered a lot of NDP votes. A lot of NDPers were excited by the idealism of the Reform Party of Canada, because the NDP tend to be more idealistic sometimes, and therefore, they gravitated to the Reform Party of Canada. They helped them bring 52 MPs to parliament in one year.

An MLA should not necessarily be safe for four full years. Therefore, recall legislation is an escape valve for constituents. It’s a caution to an MLA, saying: “You can’t be totally safe in your riding. You can’t do anything you want. You have to watch your P’s and Q’s. You can’t do anything you please between elections, because your job could be in jeopardy, right away, if you do something really bad.” Within 60 days, a by-election can be generated.

Let’s look at what recall actually is. It’s actually a very difficult process, with a very high bar. First, you have to be a registered voter. If you are, after your elected MLA has served for 18 months — they have 18 months, sort of a blackout period — you can petition to remove a sitting member of the Legislative Assembly from office.

A voter can only petition to recall the member for the electoral district in which they live. The voter has to collect signatures from 40 percent of voters eligible to sign the petition in that electoral district, and applications for recall petitions cannot be submitted to Elections B.C., as I said, during the 18 months after the member was elected.

In Canada, the recall process is unique. There’s no other province and certainly no other federal law like it.

It’s a high bar. What would it mean for me, in practical terms? I have about 35,000 voters in my riding. So a constituent who would want to recall me would have to get 14,000 other constituents to sign a document, and that is from the voters list that was valid 18 months previous to that. As we know, people move. They move in and out of constituencies. They move around in constituencies. They change their names sometimes. Voters lists become outdated quite quickly, and that’s why the voters list is renewed every year, and we, as MLAs, get a new voters list every year.

The petitioner has to go off the old one of 18 months ago, and that makes it more difficult. There’s a time limit to complete a recall petition. You have exactly 60 days. If you can’t sign up 14,000 people in 60 days, in eight weeks, there will be no recall of the member. Moreover, you’ll have to sign up way more than 14,000, because there will be mistakes. There will be voters who are no longer voters. There needs to be a big margin of error. They would have to gather way more than 14,000 signatures.

I don’t know if my constituents are aware of the magnitude and the difficulty of this task. During an election, which is a 28-day period, just half of that time, a politician can get to maybe 3,000, maybe 5,000 homes. One person, therefore, could never do a recall. This needs to be a concerted effort, a coordinated effort by a large number of people, to go door-to-door, to visit thousands of people, to attend public places, to accost people as they come out of public buildings, to explain the reason for the recall, to get the signature, to make sure the voter is on the voters list as it was at the time of the last election — as long as 18 months in the past.

There also needs to be some kind of a public campaign to let people know the issues, what the MLA has done, the reason that the MLA needs to be recalled. That requires funds to advertise on radio, TV and newspapers; to print materials to hand out; to assist volunteers with expenses; maybe to open a campaign office. There are all sorts of expenses that go with a recall petition.

[3:30 p.m.]

What kind of funding would it take? Well, the current government has set a limit for spending on a provincial election campaign, which is only 28 days, of $58,000. What kinds of personnel are required?

As an example, in 2010, there are records, extensive records, of former recall campaigns. In 2010, there was a recall campaign against a member here in Victoria. There were 289 canvassers who registered as canvassers officially, who stepped up to gather signatures. They gathered not quite 9,000 signatures. I would need 14,000 in my riding.

The petition failed because there were not enough signatures, even with 289 people to motivate and to coordinate and to contact. To get out 289 people to help canvass is a huge task in and of itself. There were several other petitions with nearly 200 canvassers.

A recall petition is an enormous challenge to undertake. It requires funding. It requires hundreds of volunteers on the ground going door to door. This is grassroots politics. It requires, I think, a lot of public dissatisfaction with the MLA in order to motivate the public to get on board.

Well, the history of recall is really a history of the difficulty of the process. Elections B.C. tells us that there have been 26 recall petitions approved by the Chief Electoral Officer since the legislation came into being in 1995. Every single one of them has failed — every one. Of those 26, only six were even returned to the Chief Electoral Officer. Twenty of the petitioners just gave up. They couldn’t find the volunteers. They couldn’t get to enough doors to even come close to meeting the steep threshold for approval.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Only six of the petitioners were really serious. Of the six that were returned for verification by the Chief Electoral Officer, five were rejected because they didn’t have enough signatures. In the case of the last petition, the MLA resigned before the petition was finished, so the petition was dropped. But in each case, every petition was unsuccessful. There’s never been a successful recall campaign in Canada in which a petition was certified by the Chief Electoral Officer, which would automatically trigger a by-election.

Well, let’s talk about funding of recall campaigns. Under the present act, the Recall and Initiative Act, there are already lots of financial controls on funding. There has to be a financial agent. That agent has to record contributions, establish a bank account, keep detailed records. There are audits. There’s a report to the Chief Electoral Officer.

There are limits on anonymous contributions of $1,500. There are rules about fundraising functions. There are expense limits of $25,000, which is less, I would remind the Speaker, than half of what it takes to run a provincial election campaign, which is half as long as a recall campaign.

Since 1995, under the regime of so-called big money, which is really not big money at all, under legislation passed by the NDP, by the way…. It’s never been really about big money. It’s about small money. A successful recall petition has never been filed. No campaign has ever been successful.

I’m making a point through all this — the description of what recall is, the description of how difficult recall is, the description of current financial controls and limits, and so on. My point is that the piece of legislation that has been placed before us today raises the bar for a recall campaign yet further. It makes a nearly impossible campaign practically, literally impossible. I think that there will never be a recall successfully completed under the legislation, additional legislation, that we have before us today.

In fact, I thought that maybe the NDP retained a shred of idealism from way back in 1995, when they would vote for the Reform Party, even though they weren’t NDPers, and when they would pass recall legislation. I thought that they might make it easier to do a recall, not make it harder — maybe to lengthen the period of time to collect signatures or maybe to reduce the threshold of the number of signatures required.

They’re not doing any of that. They’re making it much more difficult so that an MLA will be able to act with more impunity than ever before and be less accountable to constituents between elections.

Well, the NDP say that their only motive is to take uncontrolled spending out of recall — big money — the way they did for general elections. But there never was big money in recall campaigns, and they were never successful under the financial regime that exists.

[3:35 p.m.]

It’s irrelevant financially if they introduce new financial controls, which were already tight. No, there has to be another reason for introducing this legislation in this form and at this time.

I want to talk about the existing legislation and the new legislation. The existing legislation is a significant body of work. It amounts to 173 clauses in ten different parts. It’s a long piece. It’s a complex piece. It’s intensive legislation. But this new legislation just adds to it. It is a brick. It’s 35 pages long. It has 185 clauses. It is a massive piece of legislation, in addition to the 173 clauses in the existing legislation. Talk about using a hammer to swat a fly.

It’s placing an administrative regime on a recall campaign so burdensome as to make recall impossible, and I think that the NDP have lost their way in doing so. They have lost the vision of accountability that they had 23 years ago. They’re the ones who put this legislation in place. They’re the ones who wanted to make MLAs more accountable to their constituents. But under this legislation, an MLA is less accountable, because he or she can rest assured that recall will never be successful against them.

Let me point out some measures in this law which will ensure that no recall campaign is ever successful. And I don’t care about the $1,200 limit that they’re imposing. I don’t know why it should also count against the political donation that an individual might make. The two are not connected, and they should not be connected. This is a penalty for someone becoming involved in the democratic process.

First, this imposes a massive new bureaucracy. I’m not going to relate it at all. There are pages and pages of requirements for recording, publishing, revealing names and addresses and making reports to Elections B.C. of disclosures and filings. There are stiff new punishments for the slightest breach of these detailed laws.

It’s like a bunch of tangled string. How would you ever figure out how to actually run a recall campaign under this legislation?

There are 19 new, long and complex sections detailing monetary penalties for breaking this or that little rule alone — 19 sections, many with multiple clauses in the section. These new penalties all apply to smaller amounts, because you can raise less money and spend less money under this legislation than you could before. That is, there’s a growing disproportion between the punitive nature of the legislation on one hand and the smaller and smaller amounts being managed on the other. It’s disproportionate.

The cumulative effect of all of this, of course, is to place a huge wet blanket, a deep chill, over any recall campaign.

You get a prospective petitioner, and that petitioner will ask a prospective financial agent to help him or her. The financial agent, I think, perhaps an accountant, would take one look at this forest, this dense thicket of laws, and say: “Forget it. I don’t have enough time to do the paperwork. I don’t have the hours necessary to figure it all out. And the risk of doing something wrong is too great. If I don’t cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i,’ there’s going to be an investigation by Elections B.C. I could get a monetary penalty about a minor, tiny infraction. My good name and reputation in the community will be sullied. Let the MLA go ahead and do whatever they like. Whatever bad thing they’re doing, I don’t care. It’s not worth it.”

This, I believe, is in keeping with the government’s broader policy agenda, because under proportional representation, recall wouldn’t be able to function at all. There’s a one-member, one-constituency relationship of accountability now, but in proportional representation, we would lose that. Party lists would make sure of that, because the party boss would simply parachute a party appointee into a riding.

Accountability of individual members to their constituents will be gone, in any practical sense, even if this legislation stays on the books. I doubt that the government would repeal this legislation because it would look too bad, so they’ll leave it there, but it will simply be a dead letter.

Second. Second obstacle in the way of recall: the window of recall campaigns has narrowed by retaining the 18-month blackout period that we now have, which ends on November 9, and it will now include six months before the end of the same term. So there’s less time in which a recall petition can be launched.

[3:40 p.m.]

Third, the advertising limit for third parties is set at $5,000. Well, that’s not very much. Campaign signs alone for an election will cost more than double that. If you want to have a tele–town hall, for instance, where you call thousands of constituents at the same time so you can talk with them on the telephone, a live call, one call costs several thousand dollars. So this money would be eaten up just like that. Third parties won’t be of much assistance in a recall campaign to get the message of unaccountability across.

Fourth — and here’s a great one — once the Chief Electoral Officer approves a recall campaign application, no other recall campaign can start against that MLA. Whoever gets through the door first and files gets to do the recall campaign, and there can be no other launched. This means that an MLA, if they were in trouble, could get a friend to launch a recall campaign, file the paperwork and then do absolutely nothing. And that MLA would be safe from a recall campaign.

Well, none of this makes for more accountable government. The government, for some reason, is seeking to choke out any recall campaigns under their watch, and I find it particularly suspicious that they’re doing so when the numbers are so close in this House. The government cannot afford to lose a member. Even if that member does not represent his or her constituents, even if they’re not doing what their constituents want, even if they’re doing the very opposite to what their constituents want, even if the MLA does something egregious, the NDP are going to make sure that that MLA is safe by setting in place a huge number of practical barriers to recall. That’s what this legislation, I believe, is all about.

I also find the timing of the legislation to be suspicious. The first recall campaign could begin 18 months after the last election, which was held on May 9, 2017. That means that that day, 18 months after, falls on November 9. That’s the day the first recall petition could be filed. Lo and behold, this legislation suddenly appears miraculously, on November 1, on the floor of this House. What a divine coincidence. This is nothing more than a brazen and transparent attempt to ensure that no recall against a government member will be successful. I think the people of B.C. will see through this and see the real motive of the government.

The government passed legislation a year ago at this time to provide for a new donation regime for both municipal and provincial elections. It’s now applying those same rules to recall campaigns. Why didn’t they include recall in that package that they introduced a year ago? Wouldn’t it have been more efficient? Wouldn’t it have made perfect sense to do that? It only becomes clear in retrospect, as we look at the events of the past months since the budget in February.

There was an eruption of discontent in one MLA’s constituency as a result of the budget, and all of a sudden, the government wakes up and says: “Hey, recall is a real possibility here.” All of a sudden, the government, which ignored this issue until now, has a fit of principle. Suddenly it shudders to life. It shakes off its slumber and shoulders this great moral burden. Their hearts are convicted with the need to take more money out of politics.

Lo, a light descends from heaven, and the angels are singing to the Attorney General: “You need more controls on recall, Mr. Attorney General.” True to the growing sensitivity of his tender conscience, the Attorney General responds immediately, with enormous ethical passion, to the great moral challenge of his time.

We have this legislation plopped on the floor of this House just in time, just a week before a recall campaign can be mounted, a recall campaign possibly against the very member who introduced the legislation. What an amazing and fortuitous coincidence.

Well, let me point out a few things about the Attorney General. Is there any reason at all for him to be personally worried about a recall campaign? The NDP has said that they’re introducing this legislation to protect the member for Fort Langley–Aldergrove, the man who’s come back to this House six times, one of the most popular and upstanding and respected members of this House. It is absurd to think that a serious recall campaign of any note would be launched against him.

No, this is to protect the member. This is not to protect the member for Fort Langley–Aldergrove. It is to protect the Attorney General himself and the government across the way because they cannot afford to lose any member. The loss of just one member would jeopardize the viability of the government itself.

There is a reason for the Attorney General to be worried. Just take a look at his riding, Vancouver–Point Grey. It’s one of the more wealthy areas in Vancouver. It’s a beautiful area. It’s one of the wealthiest areas in Vancouver, on the west side.

[3:45 p.m.]

I used to own a small condo at Main and Broadway. I quickly learned that the west side begins at Ontario Street, and I was on the wrong side of that street. The Attorney General is on the right side of that street, very much on the right side of the tracks. He has UBC and the endowment lands; the ultra-fashionable, the ultra-chic Kitsilano Beach; the leafy suburbs which march up the hill from the water; Pacific Spirit Regional Park; Spanish Banks; Jericho Beach; Locarno Beach; Vancouver’s museum. This is a beautiful, expensive, very compact riding with almost exactly 40,000 voters in it, compressed into a very small area.

I went onto Google maps, and I measured it. It’s an area of approximately 18-by-27 city blocks and, when you measure it in kilometres, approximately 2 kilometres-by-1.5 kilometres. It’s a large population in a small geographic area, an area which the minister full well knows is very efficient and simple to canvass. It would require a minimum number of canvassers and a minimum amount of money.

In other words, if there is a riding in B.C. that would be vulnerable to a recall campaign in which a recall campaign might be successful, it would be the Attorney General’s riding.

Let’s look at the average house price in his riding. In the neighbourhood of Kitsilano, the average four-bedroom house sells for $3 million. That’s a trigger. That’s the magic number to be touched by the school tax, an annual tax on the wealth of those who live in that area, which kicks in at $3 million.

There are some in this area who would own a second home in B.C. They would be touched by the speculation tax. What about the increase in property transfer tax? There are many retirees in the minister’s riding who will be selling their homes — and who will need to — which they bought when they were cheap indeed. Now they will be selling dear and paying property purchase tax through the nose — and very unhappy about it.

There are many other taxes the minister’s government has raised that will go quite contrary to the general tenor of his riding. All I’m saying is that the minister, and his government, has made himself odious to the people of his own riding. There have been public meetings of protest against him. These people are angry, and they’re motivated. I can only imagine that a recall campaign will be mounted against him.

The government is doing everything it can. It’s pulling out all the stops in the last moments before November 9, placing every obstacle in the way to stop it and preserve this great member and his seat, regardless of whether or not he really represents the interests of his own riding.

We all know the numbers in this House. If a recall campaign against the Attorney General were to be successful, if the NDP were to lose the by-election in Nanaimo — Nanaimo has its own reasons to be angry against the government — we’d be looking at a minority coalition, a government that could not pass a budget.

I view this bill as a shameless and transparent attempt to protect the government. It has nothing to do with responsibility or accountability or transparency. In fact, it’s the opposite of all these things. It’s dampening down the opposition by legislation. It’s a highly partisan piece of legislation, and the Attorney General should be embarrassed that he would table this legislation in this House, which would benefit him personally in his own riding. I find that quite unbelievable.

It’s so contrary to how the NDP were when they were young and idealistic, when they passed this legislation in 1995, which had been approved by a Social Credit government, a government they opposed tooth and nail. Yet they passed that legislation, when they believed in greater accountability for their members.

Now they’ve become cynical and hungry for power, ready to give up on their principle, ready to step into conflict of interest so that they can keep control. And their friends in the Green Party are only too happy to support them in this.

We, as a body, will be voting against this bill.

B. Stewart: It’s an honour to stand here today before the House and speak about Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act.

After that last set of remarks by the member for Chilliwack-Kent, I can hardly imagine that I can add more to the passion and history of something so important like this, especially when I think about former leaders like Preston Manning and others like that. I am thinking that they did give up a lot to fight for democracy.

[3:50 p.m.]

Here we are. We’re talking about why this is even before the House. What is the rationale behind this? Why would we be dealing with this on the eve of the trigger point of recall campaigns in British Columbia here? I’m struck by the juxtaposition of the fact that we keep talking about the government and that we keep hearing promises and policies aimed at fixing our democracy. A system that has worked for our entire history is suddenly, apparently, so full of flaws that now, since the NDP has come to power, we need to make these amendments.

I think about the campaigns that have been fought since 1995, the people that have been subjected to that. I worked on a number of campaigns to help other members of this House not be discarded by their electorate. I see that one of the very first people on this list was a former NDP member from Prince George. Paul Ramsey was three times challenged by recall in the early days. I’m thinking: “Geez, that must really have hurt.” They were in power at the time, but they didn’t see the need to alter such a fundamental piece of legislation that is now 23 years old.

We’re standing here in this House talking about the fact that all of a sudden there are these new rules: “There should only be one recall campaign. There should only be one person that can file.” It could be a friendly person that files it just to keep others away — kind of like shark repellent in the business world. I really do kind of wonder at the validity, the integrity, the authenticity of what this act is really meant to bring.

I mean, we talk about spending limits. I think most of us all have run campaigns. I think we know how just running a simple advertisement in a local newspaper or trying to make certain that you get information out there to households — what the real cost of that is today. What does it cost to mail a letter? What does it cost to do something that’s a bulk mail drop? The $5,000 is a ridiculous amount for anybody to try to live under that cap.

Right now British Columbians are voting in a referendum on proportional representation. They say that it will bring more democracy to our province and that somehow, people’s votes will count more, but instead of more democracy for the people, this government and their friends in the Third Party are delivering more power to political parties. Let’s not get this wrong. This is about power. This is about staying in power, not about democracy, where the voters have the power and the parties don’t have the power.

This is about making certain that people’s rights are respected. The fact is that there has only been, really, one resignation out of all of these campaigns. I think there were 26 campaigns that have actually been out there of people that have actually been run against. One might have been successful, but the person that it was against resigned prior to that being validated. So there were no successful campaigns under the current system.

The majority of the campaigns have been, really, against the B.C. Liberals, not against the NDP. When we were in government, we didn’t think that we should amend the act. We didn’t change the act when there was an onslaught of campaigns brought in by people’s anger — mostly, maybe, the opposition — to a tax that we were proposing to bring in. It was defeated, but the situation is that we didn’t go and alter the democratic rights of British Columbian voters by saying that the act was maybe not restrictive enough and that we needed to make some changes to that.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

For all the talk about making every vote count, the reality is that the real choices are being made here, well before election day, by a small cabal inside party headquarters. What that side of the House calls more democracy, I call an erosion of democracy. It’s taking power from the people and giving it to the political parties. With MLAs selected and appointed by party lists, the power of political parties becomes entrenched if the proportional representation referendum is successful.

[3:55 p.m.]

I guess the real question is: with these new rules, what happens if somebody was successfully recalled, but then they made their way onto a party list and were reappointed? Are they subject to recall because they’re on the party list or appointed to a different riding? I have no idea, but those are a lot of unanswered questions.

The party insiders will choose who’s on that list, as we know. They may even choose themselves. Future MLAs will have to pass a party test, not one of the electorate. They won’t have to stand there and defend themselves about the fact…. They put themselves out there. They expose themselves in the most naked way to make certain that people see that this is a person that is going to represent them, is trustworthy and represents their values. That’s what we come here to do. We come here in this House to debate that.

That is not what Bill 53 is about. I think this is about less democracy and not more. This is really taking away voters’ rights. The idea that there’s only one person that can successfully be registered with Elections B.C. as the proponent of a recall campaign limits voters. If there is a groundswell, if there’s a person that’s elected that should be removed from office, it takes away their rights, and that’s this erosion of democracy.

The bill continues to erode all sorts of democratic rights. It puts limits at the end of it so that within six months of a general campaign, there can’t be a recall campaign, regardless of what the member has done. It’s the one piece of legislation out there that makes certain that MLAs that are elected to this House respect the fact that they have a fiduciary duty to the Legislature, to the parliament, to their party or, if they’re independent, to their independent values.

That side of the House is claiming that they’re cleaning things up, bringing the rules in line with other changes that they’ve made. Well, there’s no question about that. You know, the idea that you can….

There’s a claim to be large involvement from trade unions, big business, etc. But one of the things that we just saw in municipal elections, which only ended a short 12 days ago, is the fact that we’ve got campaigns that are being run with paid union organizers that are actually on those campaigns. That wasn’t excluded. The donations were, but the fact that we still have the ability to subvertly move funds and resources in to help people do that…. I don’t think that we’ve really helped democracy in that particular case.

I think, based on the fact that we’ve had 26 recall campaigns in 23 years of this legislation…. British Columbians are proud of the fact that they have the Recall and Initiative Act, and they want that to remain the same and not be watered down or frustrated by increased barriers. Every British Columbian has the right to challenge an MLA and have them removed from office.

We know that we get challenged almost every day in our constituency offices by the fact that we can’t solve all of the issues. We know that we can’t say yes to everything. We know, having been both in government and in opposition, that it’s an impossible task to do that, but God forbid that you end up doing something that your constituency electorate wants to take you to task on. We would be taking away those rights from people that genuinely deserve to be asked whether that was the right decision.

That right is being restricted by this government in this bill, tabled by a minister who, himself…. I went to a website today that I didn’t even know existed, but there’s currently a challenge out there. Obviously, I don’t know who’s leading it, but it has a countdown clock, and it’s very interesting timing. I think that probably we have to ask the question: is he using the power to change the rules in favour of, in the middle of the game…? He knows that, inevitably, there are people….

I mean, he’s a good MLA. He’s popular. He has a mobile constituency office that I’ve seen pictures of. I think the thing about it is that you have to believe in what you stand for when you’re here — all of the things, the legislation you bring forward, the party and stuff like that. Otherwise, you shouldn’t be here in the first place. You have to stand up for what you believe in. The idea of changing these things last-minute…. Take the proportional representation. We’ve got Bill 40, which we’ve had a lot of discussion in this House about, the fact that it was introduced actually in the middle of the referendum.

[4:00 p.m.]

The ballots — we know that they’re already in. I think there’s a report out from Elections B.C. on Monday on where the ballots have come from, and we haven’t even finished the legislation to alter this act that we’re voting on right at the present time. I just think that the timing on this is inappropriate and wrong.

What is it that’s in the current legislation that the minister is afraid of — or the party? B.C. allows sitting MLAs to be recalled. They lose their seats if 40 percent of the registered voters in the riding sign the recall petition. As the member for Chilliwack-Kent mentioned, it’s over 40,000 members in the Attorney General’s riding. To get 40 percent of that is a lot of votes to get when it’s…. I know how difficult it is to get voter turnout in any election, let alone getting them on the street corners and in front of shopping malls. It does take a lot of people, and as we’ve seen, it has not been very successful.

This act was introduced in 1995. I think of the fact that here’s a government that has introduced this legislation. It’s their own legislation, brought in by one of their former governments. Interestingly enough, of the 26 recall campaigns I mentioned, only eight were targeted against the NDP. The balance were against independents, members of the B.C. Liberal Party.

I mentioned Paul Ramsey, who had three of the eight that were launched against the NDP, and also Helmut Giesbrecht. There are two. So there were five out of the eight against two particular NDP members during the time when they were both in government. They were actually in government. But I do see other people that I recognize on here. Gordon Campbell was targeted twice. Marc Dalton. Dr. Terry Lake, the former Minister of Health.

I think the reality is that there are a lot of respectable people here. I don’t know if they were always on — the reason — because their local voters felt that they were not doing the right job, but they were on there. I mean, there’s always controversy, as we well know, when you’re in government and you’re making decisions. They’re not always popular. They make some people happy, and they make others not so happy.

Just in case the minister is concerned about maybe this being…. Is this going to be the first successful recall campaign, and we need a new set of rules? I mean, what is it — 50-some pages of rules here? It’s interesting that that rewrite is just coming to the House now, when we’ve had almost 18 months for that to happen.

We know that other recall campaigns are being talked about. So what is the concern? Is the concern about the fact that the recall act is not democratic? It’s not fair? Or is it a case of the fact, as we’ve seen in the House just in the last few days, that the votes are very close. The fact is that these types of things have a way of changing governments. Is that the fear? Is it about the power? Is it about the fact that people want to retain power?

You know what? We have been waiting all this time. I won’t remind the House how many years. But anyway, the fact is, the reality is, we’ve had nearly 18 months and they have a record that they now have to stand up for. I don’t think this is the way to stand up for it, by altering referendum rules and recall rules.

I suspect that if there was a success in any of those campaigns…. My suspicion is that this is about self-preservation. The fact is, nobody really wants another election. We just want clarity. We want our democratic rights.

Lots of people are out there talking about the democratic rights that they don’t have under the current first-past-the-post system. We’re not talking about that in this piece of legislation. What we are talking about is the fact that if we go back to the polls, it will be under first-past-the-post. I’m sure, in that, every vote will count in the first-past-the-post, if there’s an election prior, as it does in every election.

The government side…. I mean, I don’t know if I’d be scared. I think that when you are government, you need to be confident and you have to have confidence in the legislation you’re doing, that you’re doing the right thing, what people want. At the ballot box, that’s when the decision is made on whether you did or didn’t do the right thing.

[4:05 p.m.]

They’re removing the possibility that an MLA could face more than one recall campaign. I think that that part is fundamentally a democratic right that shouldn’t be there. We shouldn’t be able to say how many people…. I mean, who’s organizing in a riding, like in Kelowna West? I don’t know of an organization. There might be one out there. There’s bound to be. There are other people that certainly don’t support me, and they don’t vote for me in the general election.

The reality is that they’re not organized. The reality is that for a campaign of this magnitude to reach that 40 percent of the actual electorate in the riding, you need to have some organization. One person just…. You know, to disqualify the fact that a recall campaign, and only one recall campaign, could possibly be the only opportunity that those voters had would be denying them a democratic right.

If one recall is attempted, there could be no more during the term of office, as I’ve said. Constituents with legitimate concerns will be shut out from acting on their concerns. I think that people will be more angry if we were to allow this piece of legislation to come out. When they find out that — the fact that their group or their block or whatever it is that’s angry with the particular issue that an MLA sitting in this House has brought forward — I think that the situation is that they’re going to be more angered by the fact that we didn’t stand up and try to make certain we protected their democratic rights.

It’s well known that the act has been around — the 23 years it has been in existence. People know. It’s on line. Elections B.C. has it up there. I think that at this point in time to change it at the eleventh hour brings into question the legitimacy of the chamber and the whole bill that is before us.

I guess the idea of fake kind of comes to mind, when you can limit…. You know, the fact that if one person files a recall application with Elections B.C., it might not be legitimate. Mind you, there are many on here where I see an awful lot of zeros. They never…. They failed to submit in terms of Elections B.C. reports. Maybe it’s already been used before just to, perhaps, put a scare into a particular MLA or try to move a direction or a support for particular things that they wanted in their riding.

These so-called democratic enhancements happening — I just can’t imagine how undemocratic this particular bill is. This bill seems to just kind of go against everything that we all believe in, in terms of the recall and referendum act, what its intention was in the first place. It’s to correct where there’s a wrong, where something has happened. I think that with the members that have spoken before me…. I know that they’ve cited many instances where most people that come to this House come with a value and the fact that they’re here to do the right thing.

The bottom line is that this would be just taking away that right for voters to be able to make certain that they had a chance to speak their voice in the middle of four, 4½…. It could be five years, right? I mean, the government has already changed the length of the fixed election date. We had two, three, four successful fixed election dates, and all of a sudden, now it seems like we need an extra six months.

This is the erosion of democratic rights — the more time. The fixed election date was very clear. It was so that governments couldn’t strategize and just try to win elections based on the fact of what was happening. They had to fight on that record of what the period of time is that they’d been in government — what they completed, what they said, how they took care of people, whether it was about jobs, social welfare, their well-being and making certain that people had a right to hear, again, why they would be the right people to choose for running the government.

I think that this is just a series of erosional tactics that is about power. I don’t think that British Columbians want that. I think that we’ll see, come soon enough, what the results of the proportional representation campaign are. As badly as I think it’s been handled, I think the fact that….

[4:10 p.m.]

The numerous stories that we read in the papers — multiple ballots arriving for people that have either moved or are deceased — just go back to all of the flaws about enumeration, which hasn’t been done for years. There are ways that they’re doing it, but the bottom line…. My colleague from Kelowna–Lake Country filed his late aunt’s tax return a couple of years ago, and he got a ballot for her.

The point about it is that these are the types of things that are going on. There’s the degree of certainty about the democratic process, and integrity is being compromised by some of these things. In what? We say we want to increase the democratic system so that we have the opportunity for people to make certain that their vote counts, in a different way. I think that this is just another one of these not well-thought-out, not intentionally thought out, in terms of how it’s going to increase democracy amongst voters in British Columbia.

I think about the campaigns that I had a chance to work on here and why people were angered, why they signed these petitions. I think of the local MLA in Oak Bay–Gordon Head, Ida Chong. She was re-elected, I think, several times. They had to achieve 15,368 votes to enable her to be recalled and to have to have a new election. They achieved 8,870, with almost 300 people out there campaigning and petitioning for her. It is a huge threshold to try to get over that hurdle.

I know Ida personally, and I know that she did excellent work. She cares about people in her community, and she cares about her province. The fact is that I don’t necessarily know if that was more mean-spirited.

Anyway, I suspect that the results of these other campaigns, many that I do know: Richard Lee; Marc Dalton, who I mentioned; Dr. Terry Lake; Don McRae; Ida Chong; Lorne Mayencourt; Gordon Campbell; Jeff Bray; Blaire Suffredine; Wendy McMahon; Gillian Trumper; Mike Hunter; Judith Reid; Val Roddick…. These are people that I know, most of them. I’m telling you: these are people that served with distinguished careers and service and integrity. They are not the types of people that recall was targeted at.

The only one I would say that I don’t really know is the one that resigned. I think that, realistically, maybe the people in his particular riding of Parksville-Qualicum felt different. The reality that he had been caught doing something that he shouldn’t have done — people took that as being a signal that he wasn’t very trustworthy.

I do know that there are a lot of people that want to speak about this particular topic, because it is topical in the sense that here we are talking about legislation that would alter and allow people, only just a few days away from the start of the official date — by actually giving them a different set of rules than what they organized for…. I don’t know if that’s the reason that’s driving this particular piece of legislation.

Citizens have the right to recall, and members of this House should not have the right to intervene to protect themselves. That’s a clear conflict. True democratic power rests with the people, and this bill erodes that and our democracy. This is just more deck-stacking by the Attorney General, just as he’s done on the PR referendum. We can debate that, but we know that it’s not perfect, and the reality is it doesn’t follow what I think people would expect — that those ballots would be coming to a typical general election.

It’ll be a sad legacy for this House and this government if this bill passes. On that note, Mr. Speaker, I’d like to thank the House and thank you.

R. Sultan: I’m pleased to offer to the Legislature my views on Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act of 2018, amending further the Recall and Initiative Act of 1996. Interestingly, Encyclopaedia Britannica defines a recall election as a populist innovation, facilitating “an attempt to minimize the influence of political parties on representatives.”

[4:15 p.m.]

If that definition holds true in this part of the world, one might expect the NDP Party and its Green Party allies in this assembly — populists to their constitutional core, as I understand them — to defend stoutly any attempt to minimize, cripple, diminish and curtail, if not stop dead completely, recall initiatives in British Columbia.

To the contrary, we heard this morning a litany of red herrings, false characterizations and calumny directed upon our side of the House, and the all-too-familiar bafflegab which has come to characterize the efforts of some members of the Green-NDP coalition to fundamentally redesign, rejig and repurpose the process of democracy in this province with the not-terribly-hidden goal of cementing themselves into power by discouraging any meaningful check upon their balance of power.

In defence of their desperate measures, I must concede that if my own hold on life depended on a single vote, the health of a single member, the vagaries of travel across this broad province, the possibility of being hit by a bus, getting into a bicycle confrontation with a taxi, or the onset of a viral plague or mortality, who knows? Then, with one eye on that single-seat majority, I guess I, too, might resort to any hyperbole and imagined distortion of the reason, circumstance or motive of the other folks to hang on to power.

Certainly, the Green-NDP alliance is burning through their political capital, in my observation, with an astonishing degree of recklessness. Bill 53 is another example of that.

No, this bill is not, as members opposite alleged earlier today, a desire to nullify the influence of big money, dark money, uncharted money, on politics. If that was their true motive, we would see language in the bill banning their allies from putting onto the streets armies of unionized supporters beyond Elections B.C. reckoning. True, they say they’re getting big money from unions, corporations, out of politics. But am I allowed to ask: how about big wages?

The distinguished member for Vancouver-Langara ob­served earlier today that this bill is part and parcel of the initiative to change our voting system. We’ve been at this for all of 14 months. It’s linked, because when this side asked the Attorney General in the spring how the Recall and Initiative Act would need to be refined or redefined in the context of proportional representation — that was the question asked of the AG — he said to us he didn’t know.

Taking him at his word, they hadn’t really figured that out yet. But time moves on, and now we’re witnessing the mopping-up exercise, in full deployment, dealing with such potentially disruptive side issues as recall.

As the Encyclopaedia Britannica clarifies in their definition for us, as I cited a moment ago, recall is a populist innovation facilitating “an attempt to minimize the influence of political parties on representation.” So saith Britannica. Well, such interpretations have significance in the present context, I would suggest. The Green-NDP alliance is attempting to restructure grassroots democracy so that individual voters count less; so that recall campaigns are really very difficult, if not impossible, to organize; and so that parties, not individuals, reign supreme. It’s all about the party.

Now, I have to confess my biases. My mind tends to drift back to those captivating John le Carré novels which I became addicted to at the height of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union, run by the all-controlling party, versus the freedom-loving west. Perhaps I’m a victim of recreational literature, or am I?

[4:20 p.m.]

Today we see enacted in this House a series of measures and a brand-new proposed voting system which envisages future MLAs acting in accordance with their party’s instructions, in accordance with what the party bosses say. “Sounds somewhat familiar,” says something in the back of my brain. “I think I read that story before somewhere.”

There’s no question about the workings of proportional representation. When you’re selected from a party list — and under the alternatives, all of them, many of us, would be, if we’re still here — rather than being elected by constituents, your loyalty to party ideology and to your party leader is paramount.

Buried somewhere in the muddled array of PR referendum choices facing citizens as we speak is the stark reality that often as not, you’ll be selected to be an MLA by the party, as opposed to being elected by the citizens. So you’d better pay attention to what the party has to say. That’s the system being advocated.

What’s the relevance of all of that for Bill 53? The member for Vancouver-Langara asked: “How does recall work in that context? Your loyalty and your accountability are to your party leader, not to the constituents, because they didn’t select you in the first place.” So how would recall work under that new arrangement? He said: “…I think it’s a very serious question to be asking in this House” at this time.

Well, we’re spending this time and effort in the Legislature today to try and figure out, and possibly amend, the Recall and Initiative Act, having material impact on the process of choosing representatives in the very middle of the very referendum which will also amend the voting rules. Did I get that straight, or is this a tale from Alice in Wonderland?

If this government wanted to make these adjustments, why didn’t they figure that out and communicate to the public its wishes before the campaign began on July 1? Changing the recall rules in midstream has about as much legitimacy as the other initiative promising a second referendum right in the middle of the first referendum. These people do not lack for creativity.

These are examples of what the government is doing to, I would say, undermine our democratic process — tinkering with the process on the fly, as it were, and fixing up the future trouble spots as they appear. Well, that’s, I guess, one way to run a country.

They brag they’ve gotten rid of big money, while letting union-paid activists work on municipal campaigns. Oh, what’s this all about? Many of the 19 trade unions who’ve been given a government-enforced Crown corporation monopoly on public works…. I believe it’s true, although I stand to be corrected. If true, I think it’s quite unbelievable. In the jargon of our profession — and we like to think we have a profession — it’s what some would call a payoff. That’s a jarring word.

Once again, I quote the words of the distinguished member for Vancouver-Langara: “…they passed legislation in this House — the Local Elections Campaign Financing Amendment Act — and they left a fairly large loophole where union-paid activists could continue to volunteer, supposedly to work on municipal campaigns, to support candidates and municipal campaigns, like in Vancouver…backed by the unions. Union-endorsed candidates.”

For all that we know, the unions may be claiming a tax deduction on their political contributions. Who knows? That’s only my private speculation; that’s not the member for Vancouver-Langara talking. But whether true or not, is that fair? This government talks a lot about fairness in this democratic process yet left these huge loopholes in the act, which undermine democracy in this province, particularly in places like Vancouver, I would suggest.

Let’s look at this bill on recall. I’m continuing to quote the member for Vancouver-Langara, I interject and point out. He said:

“…we see that in-kind volunteer donations, or donations of volunteer time, aren’t included. ‘The value of the following is not a sponsorship contribution: (a) services provided by a volunteer.’”

That’s right out of the bill, I guess — the act — or maybe it’s the regulation.

“They have now made this an explicit loophole in this 50-plus page bill.”

So we’ve formalized it. If there’s any doubt whatsoever, the way is clear. Go to it, fellas.

[4:25 p.m.]

“They have now made what was the issue in the municipal campaign elections explicit in this recall campaign legislation.

“Yes, they’ve limited third-party expenditures to a lower amount than what’s permissible in by-elections with a 28-day campaign. This is a 60-day referendum petition period, yet the amount” — wow, huge — “at $5,000, is even less than what you can do in a 28-day by-election period. How is that fair?

“On top of that, third parties are now limited in what they can do, yet volunteer efforts can come forward…. You would have thought — given the furor and the concern” that did emerge in the municipal elections so recently concluded, “both during and after — that this would be addressed” in this bill, but it is not.

We cease to blame the member for Vancouver-Langara for my language and continue on — on my own.

I would be remiss if I didn’t comment on the conduct of the member who sponsored this bill modifying the recall act — the Attorney General of our province. The Attorney General is the chief legal officer for this government. As a member of executive council, he has a higher level of responsibility and duty to our province.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

We look to him for guidance on ethical conduct. He is our legal exemplar. But, oops, as the media reports, at least suggests, that self-same Attorney General may be subject to one of these recall campaigns, which are the subject of the very bill he has sponsored and asks this House to adopt today. Say that again. Did I hear correctly? One doesn’t have to be an ethical scholar to find all of this more than a trifle jarring.

Optics and perception are important in terms of the confidence that British Columbians have in this government — the reputation that this government rises and falls with that of its Attorney General. Believe me, I think it’s true.

To be perfectly blunt about it, for the Attorney General to present this bill in the House at this time, when it is apparent that he will prosper or suffer whether the bill succeeds or fails, is shameful. It’s shameful. I could use stronger language. Let me merely say: shame, with an exclamation mark.

It’s offensive to British Columbians that the AG would use this opportunity to change the rules of recall just when it appears some of his constituents are about to launch whatever efforts they may choose to launch under the rules of recall that have been placed for many, many years. Whoops. “Danger, danger. Better change those rules.” I can hear the background panic shouts already.

There’s yet another sledgehammer in the Attorney General’s kit bag. Changing the period of eligibility for recall, the Attorney General said: “The window of opportunity during which a recall can be brought forward is being curtailed.” Right now you can only start it after the first 18 months in office, but that’s being pushed out to 24. So this means members will be safe for at least the first half of their term.

They may also may be orchestrating false petitions in the suspicious mind of the member for Vancouver-Langara, and he’s more or less worked out how it would work, and it sounds to me like it would work rather well. Congratulations on inventing how to gum up the works, Member. There is no end of impediments when you have set your mind to it, and we have a good example of that in this bill today.

Jocularity aside, it’s a sad day for British Columbia when the chief lawmaker of the province sets out to amend the law to favour himself personally. Our government may think most British Columbians are docile and uninformed and don’t really care, cynical about politicians and the political process, and they may be about half right, in that respect.

[4:30 p.m.]

Their present mood will pale in comparison with their attitude when they wake up to find that their ridings have been changed to be unrecognizable; that they no longer know any of the people claiming to look out for their interests because they live somewhere else; and that half of them got into the Legislature in the first place through the back door, since they couldn’t get elected dogcatcher, as a former Prime Minister of Canada famously remarked when asked about proportional representation.

I think that really what British Columbians should try to understand are the true objectives of this government…. Of course, we know it’s to stay in power. We acknowledge that, and it’s what governments do. It’s power to continue to implement the agenda they are rolling out, in conjunction with their colleagues, the Green power, who wield, I must say, a rather disproportionate balance of power in the House.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

They’re trying to keep together this fragile coalition. The corollary of this is that, in my view, with this slender, patched-together mandate, they really do not have the confidence of the province to start, basically, radically altering the democratic process. I just don’t think it’s reasonable that they set out to do that.

Above all of the issues and priorities facing the government is the referendum itself, what the government is doing on the recall petition act and the promise of a second referendum. I’m sure some of our constituents are a bit confused by all of this. Some days I am too. The member from Mount Pleasant was confused as well, which I can sympathize with. I think the media was a little harsh.

These are fundamental concerns for all British Columbians — about the behaviour and conduct of this government. But they all live and die together. They’re all in this together, and I must say, they are continuing to, in my opinion, undermine our process of democracy.

If I was a member of the NDP party, just to conclude, it would give me pause that two of the most distinguished Premiers of this province, both of NDP conviction, constitution and credentials: Glen Clark, who’s now busy running one of the largest business enterprises we have in British Columbia, and Ujjal Dosanjh, who has a new career as, I would characterize it, a defender of rights, democracy and the ability to speak what is on your mind…. I’ve come to admire this man greatly.

Well, as I’m sure all of the people on the opposite side of the bench have been told immediately by their leadership, neither of them say proportional representation is a very good idea. Wow. If asked, they might also say that tinkering with recall in the middle of a recall campaign is probably not a very good idea either.

J. Thornthwaite: I rise today to speak to Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act.

I don’t really quite get what this bill is all about and what problem it is trying to solve. I didn’t know that there was an issue with big money in recall campaigns. I get the idea of keeping big money out of politics, but what I have seen so far from this government is that although their words sound good and make sense, they have been, so far, unable to back them up 100 percent with their actions or legislation.

We keep hearing promises and policies aimed at fixing our democracy, but every single step has brought an erosion of our democracy. For instance, that side of the House said that they were getting big money out of municipal politics. Yet big money remained, with union-endorsed candidates enjoying the support of union-paid staff, putting up signs, doing robocalls and pretending that individuals were running as independents, but they were actually running on an NDP slate.

We even saw the member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale hosting campaign lessons in her office, out of her own non-partisan office.

[4:35 p.m.]

We know that in the last municipal campaign, union members of any union or who had any affiliation with the provincial and/or federal NDP, which are essentially the same, were called on or visited by supporters. We know that union members were told who to vote for. This is in the municipal election that just passed, supposedly with big money and big unions out of politics. So we know that’s not happening.

The NDP actions, therefore, fail to line up with their words. Our critic the member for Kamloops–South Thompson warned the minister, way back when the original legislation was brought forward, that this loophole was going to be a problem, but the minister ignored that warning, and here we are.

This bill, Bill 53, is self-serving to the very individual who’s bringing it forward. The member for Vancouver–Point Grey, which has already been determined is looking like he’s going to be up for a recall campaign, and maybe the member for Abbotsford South as well…. They are being targeted by organized efforts on line. We just understood, from the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, that he’s actually witnessed recall signs that are up in the riding of Vancouver–Point Grey for the Attorney General.

Let’s just say: what would happen if these two recall campaigns were actually successful? They would require money, and they would require organizations, and let’s face it, recall campaigns are not successful. But currently, there are no spending restrictions on recall campaigns. If these two individuals perchance did lose their seats, then by-elections would be called. If by-elections were called and if those two seats came to the favour of the B.C. Liberals, that would mean that the B.C. Liberals would have 44 seats and the NDP-Greens, 43. Obviously, what that would mean is we would be returning into a general election very, very quickly.

I suspect that this legislation to do with recall has actually got more to do with a potential provincial election coming up soon, if the numbers change, because they’re so close together right now in the House.

As I mentioned, the recall signs are already up in the riding of the member for Vancouver–Point Grey, our Attorney General, who happens to be the individual that is bringing forward this bill — just eight days before recall campaigns can legally get started. I truly cannot believe that this is just a coincidence.

Right now British Columbians are voting in a referendum on proportional representation that claims to make every vote count. But in reality, it’s putting more power to political parties, not voters. For all the talk of making every vote count, the reality is that in today’s first-past-the-post system, every vote does count.

Just ask Mary-Ann Booth, the new mayor of West Van, who won by 21 votes. There is a recount. I’m sure tonight she is very, very nervous, because the result of that recount will be announced tomorrow.

Just ask the new mayor of Peachland. She’s the new mayor of Peachland because of a coin toss. It was that close.

Don’t tell Mary-Ann Booth and the new mayor of Peachland that every vote doesn’t count.

This push for proportional representation is totally to appease the three elected Green MLAs. I suspect, in reality, many of the NDP — except those perhaps that are in swing ridings, because they would be on the top of the list of a political list — actually don’t want PR either. In fact, that is what Bill Tieleman, an NDP strategist, told the members for West Vancouver–Capilano and West Vancouver–Sea to Sky in an event that we held a few weeks ago.

We expect that the enthusiasm for proportional representation from the NDP side is because they are whipped, and they are being told to be supportive of proportional representation because of the agreement that the party has with the Green Party.

[4:40 p.m.]

We know the Minister of Advanced Education could not explain proportional representation when asked, when she was out and about campaigning in her neighbourhood. We know that numerous NDP ex-Premiers and strategists have been very public about their opposition to the proportional referendum — the most recent one, Glen Clark. We also know that even if you may support the idea of another referendum — and we actually do support that — you might not like this one because of the way it’s being handled in such a partisan way.

We’ve all heard the problems with the ballots, the cost, the concern over fringe parties getting more power and all the 29 unknowns that are yet to be decided after the vote. I mentioned those in question period the other day. The people that are in the North Shore are worried. Would our four ridings go down to three or two, or one big riding? How many MLAs would represent those of us on the North Shore? How many of those MLAs would be appointed from party lists? How many of those MLAs would be elected? We don’t know, because those are the types of questions that we have to wait for until after the vote is done.

We know that party insiders will choose who’s on the party list. They may even choose themselves. We all know the instance in New Zealand. Many people in this House use New Zealand as a great example of the success of proportional representation. Well, we know that there are nine MPs, all of whom either didn’t run or didn’t get elected in the ridings that they ran in. The Deputy Prime Minister also lost his seat, but because of proportional representation, he’s now not only the Deputy Prime Minister but was, essentially, the Prime Minister when the Prime Minister was on maternity leave.

This is less democracy, not more. The bill we are debating today is yet another case of this government eroding the very democracy it is pretending to enhance. That side of the House is claiming they’re cleaning things up and bringing the rules in line with all the other changes they’ve made. They say they’ve gotten rid of big money, but — oops — letting union-paid activists work on municipal campaigns is okay — so-called volunteers. By the way, this bill does not consider volunteer contributions as contributions. So there’s yet that same loophole that is still in here.

Every British Columbian has the right to challenge an MLA and have them removed from office. They can try with a recall campaign, or they can wait until the next election, and boot them out. Quite frankly, this is another worry about proportional representation. It’ll become much more difficult to get rid of anyone.

I’ve already mentioned what happened with New Zealand, that those nine MPs either didn’t run or did run and lost, and they’re still MPs. Why? It’s because they were at the top of the party list, and they got appointed. You don’t even need to win an election to get appointed. Somebody said in this House — it might have come as a quote from, maybe, one of those NDP strategists: “Therefore, that means proportional representation is for losers.” Even if you lose, you win.

The Attorney General is using this bill to save his own job. I guess that’s to be expected, because this is the same minister who is portrayed as the government’s independent arbiter of electoral reform, proportional representation, while at the same time acting as a fierce and formidable proponent for scrapping our electoral system the way it is right now. You can’t be independent and promote PR at the same time, and actively campaign.

Our leader has asked the conflict commissioner to rule on whether the Attorney General is in a conflict of interest for trying to reform recall campaigns while a potential campaign is being organized against him in his own riding.

[4:45 p.m.]

This was the question: “Does the Attorney General’s participation in debating and voting on the recall legislation constitute a conflict of interest when he’s aware of a recall campaign targeting him” — of course, he is aware, because there are signs in his riding — “and would he be in a conflict after an actual recall campaign became formalized?”

Not only are we potentially faced with a drastic change in our electoral system, to proportional representation — which, by definition, potentially appoints losers, as I said before — but now with Bill 53, it’ll make it even more difficult to get rid of anyone. Again, this is reducing democracy and limiting the tools available to citizens. Is this power to the people? No. It’s power to the parties.

For that matter, how do you recall an MLA under proportional representation? Could a recalled MLA just be reappointed by their party boss? How’s that for accountability? Are we actually stuck with an MLA forever? At least in current elections, we can boot them out after four years.

Citizens do have a right to recall, and they have a right to vote for whomever they want in an election and to boot them out if they don’t want them in the next election. This bill erodes that. Proportional representation erodes that. It erodes our democracy. I will not be supporting this bill.

E. Ross: I’m going to do something different here. I’m going to try explaining, for the millions watching at home on Legislature TV, what’s actually going on here.

After an election, if a region or a riding is unhappy with their MLA for any number of reasons, that riding or region has the right to recall their MLA, as per the Elections B.C. rules, and have another election, a by-election. To do this, the citizens need to get a petition going and get 40 percent of the registered voters in a riding to vote in favour of a recall. Good luck to them if 40 percent of the registered voters in the riding didn’t even turn out for the general election.

The process to recall an MLA is onerous, to say the least. It has to follow a number of rules under Elections B.C., and it has certain thresholds it has to achieve before it can get an MLA recalled.

The citizens of Vancouver–Point Grey are unhappy with their MLA because the NDP wants to impose a new tax on homes worth over $3 million. The homeowners of Vancouver–​Point Grey claim that this is a tax grab on unrealized tax gains, meaning the value of their properties have gone up. But that is not the fault of the homeowner, nor does it equate to real cash.

This Vancouver–Point Grey tax grab, in some examples, has gone from $15,000 to $18,000 last year but will in­crease this year to $32,000. This is what the homeowners are angry about, because they had no idea that this was coming. Now, given how much effort and money has to go into a recall campaign, it’s fairly obvious that it’s unfair for the MLA/Attorney General to put obstacles in front of the very people who voted him in and now want a recall campaign to get him out.

This bill, Bill 53, the amendment, is not only meant to limit the financial means of Vancouver–Point Grey to launch a recall of their own MLA; it’s meant to dishearten and discourage the average voter by saying: “You can’t fight city hall. We’ll come up with a legislative obstruction to slow you down, if not to stop you.”

It would be disappointing if the government were successful in using the full government powers to silence the voter. Government is not supposed to intimidate or silence its citizens through legislation, at least not in Canada. Government is supposed to uphold the principles of democracy. They’re not supposed to water them down or use them for their own purposes.

It’s ironic that the B.C. Liberals are standing up for residents in a riding that elected an NDP MLA. We do it because it’s our job. It’s what we got elected to do, not only to stand up for our own constituents in our own ridings but to stand up for British Columbians when we see something unfair. What’s happening to the people in Vancouver–Point Grey, in terms of the tax grab, is unfair.

[4:50 p.m.]

What is also unfair and what’s quite obvious to this side of the House is that the MLA for Vancouver–Point Grey has extraordinary powers over his own fate in this situation. The other side of the House has its hands in the air asking us, “What’s wrong with this?” — asking like there’s nothing wrong. But in any type of ruling, in any type of situation, you always know that people in power have an unfair advantage over those who don’t have power.

A political person in this position, especially being the Attorney General and making rules on this and proposing bills to make recall even harder, is a very unfair situation. In a sense, he’s determining his own fate using legislative powers. Surely anybody can see this. It’s an imbalance of power. And of course, the timing is suspect, because everybody knows that the people of Vancouver–Point Grey are planning to do a recall.

The reaction from that side of the House is the same thing when we’re talking about unfairness, especially when we’re talking about a rigged referendum on proportional representation. It’s common knowledge that this NDP government has done its level best to engineer and manipulate a win on the proportional representation referendum, and there are many flaws in this referendum. Never mind the outcome of what happens to us under an electoral system, under proportional representation, the process — the referendum itself — that is flawed.

Without a doubt, it seems the consensus out there is that the biggest flaw in this whole process is there’s a lack of information, a huge lack of information, when it comes to boundaries, when it comes to who will represent each riding. It’s not even clear whether or not a political party would choose an MLA for a certain riding, like Skeena or Vancouver–Point Grey.

Now, when you contrast this to Bill 53, the amendment of the Recall Act, this is detailed enough to slam the door shut on citizens who have the right, currently, to recall their MLA. This doesn’t only intimidate voters and citizens in a riding. It doesn’t just intimidate citizens of B.C. This bill actually allows manipulators and fake campaigners to get their false petition in line first, so no legitimate campaigns can get recognized by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Whoever applies their petition first gets dealt with first, and nobody else will be entertained after that. This is unfair because the people that want to keep a manipulative government in place are already planning to put in their fake campaigns, to get that application in place so no legitimate campaign can be entertained by the electoral officer.

This amendment, Bill 53, also buys extra time for the Vancouver–Point Grey MLA. Currently there is an 18-month blackout, meaning no campaigns can happen until after 18 months. Now the MLA/Attorney General from Vancouver–Point Grey has added an additional six months into this amendment, meaning the recall campaign for Point Grey won’t be legitimate until two years from the 2017 election.

Again, a person in power dictating their own future, their own fate — manipulation and engineering. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason for adding six months to this blackout. It’s a self-serving bill.

Of course, it’s guaranteed that the organizations who wanted government to keep attacking the private sector will be organizing their fake recall campaign to get first in line so they can block out the legitimate citizens who have a real beef with the tax that’s being imposed on them unfairly.

[4:55 p.m.]

I’ve been listening to speeches. The leader of the Green Party had an interesting speech. He didn’t criticize the bill. He actually praised it but also spent a lot of his time criticizing the B.C. Liberals. Yet he wants to be recognized as opposition. Opposition criticizes government. That’s our job. We’re supposed to hold government accountable. Opposition criticizing opposition doesn’t seem to work here.

We all know the reason. The Green Party is not an opposition party. That’s why they don’t stand up to anything. The Green Party is actually contractually obligated to support the NDP government. If they tried to hold the government to account or oppose the government, they’d fold quickly, like a cheap shirt, just to ensure they don’t lose their chance at a referendum on proportional representation.

Opposition is a serious job. We’re not supposed to be a house full of “yes” people. We’re supposed to defend the citizens of British Columbia. We’re supposed to defend our citizens in our ridings. If we see something unfair, we’ve got to point it out, and we’ve got to fight for it. That’s the nature of this place. It’s a good system. The only problem is the people at home don’t understand the system. They don’t understand these complex bills that are being put in front of us and that we’re debating.

The leader of the Green Party said this bill will make poli­ticians more accountable to their constituents. What is that supposed to mean? This bill is putting obstacles in front of citizens who legitimately have a complaint against their MLA and against the Attorney General and against the NDP government. Instead of encouraging these citizens, an ob­stacle is put up, in terms of this bill, to add more time and to put limits on what they can do in terms of raising finances.

The issue here is there is an MLA who is also the Attorney General who is in a powerful position and is putting up legis­lative obstructions in front of his own constituents. Now granted, if this passes, all British Columbians will have to face this as well. They’ll have to face the same obstacles. But right now the Vancouver–Point Grey citizens are fully aware that this is happening.

I’m not sure if they’re aware of the politics that goes into this place, let alone the legislative actions that are being proposed here to limit their fair voice. If government won’t stand up for it, if the Green Party won’t stand up for it, then we, as B.C. Liberals, are proud to stand up for it because this goes across partisan lines. This is malicious. Many people in Vancouver–Point Grey have equity in their houses that has been built up over many, many years. Many of these homeowners don’t have big money.

That equity in that house — a lot of them spent their life earnings buying that house, raising money for that house and working for that house. They’re not billionaires. They’re not big political manipulators trying to influence elections. Some of them are retirees. They worked hard.

The people with big money, in my opinion, are the ones that own second houses and get themselves exempted out of the speculation tax, while regular British Columbians have to pay the speculation tax. How do they get exempted? It wasn’t in here. It wasn’t done in an open, transparent manner. For the people that got exempted for owning a second home, that didn’t want to pay the exemption tax, they got an exemption in a backdoor deal done with the Finance Minister.

Then to come in here and give us a speech — a self-righteous, sanctimonious speech — about wealthy homeowners paying their fair share and limiting their campaign financing around recall? It’s shameful. I’ve been dying to use that word — shameful.

Instead, why don’t you just look at exactly what the issue is here? The issue is what’s happening is wrong. It’s a tax grab. And the people in Vancouver–Point Grey are in the right on this issue. They are in the right. They’re not wrong.

[5:00 p.m.]

What does the government do? They put together this amendment to the Recall Act — put time limits on it, increased time limits. Two years they have to wait before they develop a recall campaign, and they’re scared by government because the government is going to come down heavy-handed and talk to them about how much money they can raise for a recall campaign. It’s shameful. The Leader of the Third Party loves using that. That’s why I was dying to use that word. Shameful, shameful.

If there is such a principle that considers conflict, how about an open discussion on which homeowners get exempted from which taxes, like the speculation tax, and which do not. Let’s look at the criteria. Let’s do it here. If it’s not done here, how do we know the criteria for who gets hit with which taxes? I’m pretty sure the residents from Point Grey–Vancouver would love to see that kind of debate.

In terms of the debate and the speech that was made by the leader of the Green Party, nothing the Green Party says about this bill should be taken seriously. When in doubt on where the Green Party stands, you just have to reread the contractual agreement they signed with the NDP, which orders the Green Party to stay in line or else they lose their opportunity on a referendum on proportional representation. They are not opposition, and they are not standing up for the people of British Columbia, let alone standing up for their own ridings.

The Recall and Initiative Amendment Act is meant to stop or stall the recall campaign for Vancouver–Point Grey before it gets momentum. When we as B.C. Liberals are asked to help out on unfair tax grabs, manipulated referendums or other initiatives meant to keep the NDP and Greens in power, we have to say we are doing what we can but the system is entirely rigged by the government and the Green Party, and there’s nothing we can do about it, regardless of what you hear about collaboration.

The idea that this House is collaborating is a joke. It’s a lie. There is no collaboration in here. Even under proportional representation, there will be no collaboration. It will be deal-making. The speculation tax is a contractual agreement. The tax that the Point Grey–Vancouver people are facing right now on their residents is under a contractual agreement.

We’re doing our best as B.C. Liberals to hold government to account, but for the people at home, we just don’t have the votes. We get voted out every time. Even though the B.C. Liberals won the most seats in the election, we can’t win a vote. That’s the collaboration that people talk about, that this House likes to talk about. If there was collaboration, let’s have a real debate, and let’s see some concessions done by the government on this unfair bill, on this unfair amendment to Bill 53.

That’s our job. That’s what I got elected to do. I’ll do it for Skeena. I’ll do it for Stikine. In this case here, I’ll do it for the members of Point Grey–Vancouver, because it doesn’t seem like anybody else is going to stand up for them. So I stand with my colleagues in supporting the residents of Point Grey–Vancouver.

M. Hunt: I rise to speak to the bill that is before us, Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act. It’s quite an amazing bill. I say this as we get into all the rest of what I have to say. It’s 45 pages long. It’s 58 sections. It is an absolutely massive document that is before us, and this is only an amendment to the actual act itself.

I note that only the Attorney General, in introducing this bill, has spoken to this, from the NDP governing party. Doesn’t the government believe in this bill? Or is this just the Attorney General is putting forward…? I notice for the Green Party, of course, we’ve had the leader of the Green Party speak to it but no one else from the Green Party. I’m really wondering.

[5:05 p.m.]

Is it only those that have a problem with it that are interested in it, and the rest, well, couldn’t care less? Well, good question. It’s a most interesting day when the government members don’t even support their own bill.

Often, at citizenship ceremonies, I tell the story of my ancestry. My ancestors came to North America 400 years ago in the 1620s. We don’t know exactly where, what particular ship or what particular time, but it was certainly during the 1620s that my ancestors came to North America. And when they came to North America, one of their requirements within the group that they…. Well, first of all, let’s state it clearly. They came because they rejected what was going on in Europe. They came because of religious persecution, and they came for freedom and liberty. That’s what they came to North America for.

As they came to North America, as they threw the anchor in offshore, before they were allowed to leave the boat and actually come ashore in North America, they had to sign a covenant. And that covenant that they signed said two things. It said, first of all, that they would choose to obey the laws. Some were a little worried about that one. “I don’t know if I want to obey the laws.” The second piece was that they would be a part of creating those laws. The laws weren’t going to be coming from the top down. They were going to be coming from the bottom up. We, the people, were going to be creating those laws.

When the Americas decided to rebel against Britain, my ancestors came in 1780 — moved north — and have become part of the wonderful Canadian traditions that we have. So even before we had Confederation in 1871, my ancestors were here for almost 100 years. So we have an awful lot to be proud of here in this nation of Canada. Certainly, I’m proud of the electoral system that we have here in British Columbia that has delivered peaceful transitions of power since this province became the sixth province in 1871.

I think it’s interesting, again, to note the peaceful transition that we saw last summer, where, you know…. We think we won the election. The other side thinks they won the election. A decision was made, a vote was cast, and we moved from that side to this side in peace. I think that is something absolutely tremendous, that we did that transition in peace.

Not only that, but when we look at what is happening in America today…. There are no riots in the streets in British Columbia. We peacefully accept the decisions that we make as a collective. We work within them. And if we don’t like the laws, well, we have the privilege of running for this House, being a part of changing those laws, so that those laws can truly reflect us, the people of British Columbia, and what we want and our will.

You look at what has happened, Madame Speaker. We have built one of the most peaceful and prosperous places to live in the entire world. We are the envy of the world. All we have to do is look at the people who immigrate to this wonderful province each and every year. The envy of the world is what we have here.

Now, in the midst of that, we find most interesting these amendments that are being brought before us to the very system we have of choosing and recording our opposition to members in this House. I found the leader of the Green Party’s contribution to this debate rather interesting, because he referred to us as being cynical over here. Well, I find it amazing that in 18 short months, the Leader of the Third Party or the Green Party, who was on this side as an independent, as an opposition member, has suddenly forgotten all about being on this side of the House.

That’s our job. Our job is to be cynical. Our job is to poke at the legislation, to poke at what’s going on and see if we can find problems, find errors, find difficulties in it. That’s what we’re about.

[5:10 p.m.]

I recognize that I’m going to look at the whole agenda of this government as I focus on Bill 53, but Madame Speaker, I trust that you will allow me that liberty because I think that this is a part of the whole package, and we’ve got to look at the whole package of what’s been introduced and what has been presented by this government to truly understand what is going on here in Bill 53. And, of course, for those who are watching, I hope they will also bear with me.

We have kept hearing promises and policies that are supposedly aimed at fixing our democracy. But every step along the way, in my opinion, I’ve seen the erosion of democracy. For instance, that side of the House was talking about getting big money out of politics. “We’re going to get big business and big unions…. We’re going to get them out of politics.” So they amended our legislation on how we get elected as the provincial government.

They also amended the legislation for the municipal governments. We’ve seen the first election under those new rules for municipal government, and lo and behold, what did we find? Well, we found the exact opposite. We, in fact, found that big money was still in local elections through union-endorsed candidates who enjoyed the support of union-paid staff members. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s wrong. It’s union-paid volunteers. Yeah, they were paid by the union, but they volunteered to work on that campaign for that person. Absolutely amazing. Volunteers. So the action side — the words sounded good, but the actions didn’t line up at all with the words.

Right now, of course, again, in another debate that’s going on within this House…. And I’m trying to line them all up to Bill 53, as we go along here. We find that right now British Columbians are voting on a referendum on proportional representation. And while we’re doing that, we have an amendment to it all, coming within the House. Amazing.

This proportional representation proclaims to be bringing more democracy to town — that somehow every person’s vote will count and it’s going to better reflect what’s going on. But instead, well, that’s not actually what’s happening because it’s not more democracy for the people. This government and its friends in the Third Party are, in fact, delivering more power to political parties, not to the voters.

For all the talk of making every vote count, the reality is that the real choices are going to be made before the election, in those lists, and a very small group inside the political parties are the ones that are going to make up those lists. They’re actually going to be the ones who are going to decide what’s in this House. At least, that is what we guess, because we’re looking at the experiences elsewhere in the world, but we don’t have the details. Believe it or not, we don’t have the actual mechanisms of how PR, proportional representation, is going to work here in B.C. That’s going to be revealed after the vote.

This could really be a novel, a spy thriller, all those sorts of things, because we find the mystery…. Why mystery? Well, I think they’re afraid of us and their electorate actually knowing what the truth is. You see, what that side of the House calls more democracy, I think is an erosion of democracy.

Now, with MLAs selected and appointed from party lists, the power of the political parties is going to be entrenched. What we have here in Bill 53 is only going to continue that entrenchment, as I will talk about in a few moments. But you have to ask the question: if the MLAs are appointed from party lists, how are they going to be recalled? What are these massive, massive ridings that we have? The expenses — it’s just phenomenal. So with the MLAs selected….

Interjections.

M. Hunt: I’m sorry. Am I disturbing you with my speaking? I’m sorry.

Interjection.

M. Hunt: I know. It’s terrible. You know, the problem is that I just get excited about what’s happening here in this House. I believe in democracy. I believe in the systems that we have, and when I see the erosion of that happening, I’m sorry, I get excited. I was born with a good set of lungs and a loud voice, so…. Such is life.

Interjections.

[5:15 p.m.]

M. Hunt: Thank you so much.

You see, party insiders are going to choose who’s on that list. They may even be choosing themselves. So future MLAs will not be passing the test of the local voters. They will have to pass the party test in order to get on that list and to get their ranking on those lists. Again, we don’t know the details of how that’s going to be….

Interjections.

M. Hunt: My colleagues across the aisle can yell and scream, “Not so, not so, not so,” but we don’t have the details to know so. What we’re doing is we’re trying to look elsewhere in the world and see what they’re doing under these same systems and see what’s happening. We see that their democratic rights have, in fact, waned, and their choices have been preselected. I’m sorry. That’s not more democracy. That’s less.

The bill that we’re debating today is yet another case of this government eroding the very democracy that it’s pretending to enhance. That side of the House is claiming they’re cleaning up a few things, bringing the rules into line with other changes that have been made. “Oh well, let’s look at this.” I’d like to get rid of the big money, like the union-paid activists working in local campaigns. But I’m sorry. That’s not reality.

It’s not only this side of the House that’s a little cynical. We find the press is cynical as well. In fact, we find that one of the noted columnists who spends a lot of time in this House, by the name of Tom Fletcher, has written…. His title is: “The Conquest of Rural B.C. Nears Completion.” He goes through it. He begins this way: “It’s been just over a year since Premier John Horgan executed the first of three policy shifts to put…”

Interjections.

M. Hunt: I’m reading. I am quoting. Am I not allowed to quote, Madame Speaker?

Deputy Speaker: Please proceed.

M. Hunt: Please proceed. I thank you.

“…power into the hands of established political parties.

“Chapter 1 was reversing their campaign pledge to keep parties out of the public purse. Out went corporate and union donations. In came the looting of roughly $27 million, divided between” the three parties “over four years, according to their 2017 vote.”

I’m going to skip a little bit here. He goes on about this and cashing the cheques.

“Chapter 2 was engineering the move to proportional representation.” Again, I’m quoting. “The Green boss….” I won’t say his name, even though it’s quoted here. I’ll be careful, Madame Speaker. The member who is the leader of the Green Party “didn’t even want a referendum.”

He stands up in the House defending a referendum that he didn’t even want, because he wanted to trample over the people’s right to know and control their voting system. He was ready to just run roughshod over the voters and the taxpayers of this fair province. As soon as he got his first demand of having party status without four MLAs, he pressed the terms for this mail-in ballot.

I’ll skip along to chapter 3. “Chapter 3 is voter suppression.” The Premier “first tried to keep the hodgepodge of invented options quiet until after summer, because no one would want to talk ‘pro rep’ while barbecuing.” We find a cynical press.

Well, I would argue that this is chapter 4, the bill that is before us, to make recall impossible. I think what we’re looking at is the attempt, through this, to make it absolutely impossible.

Now, I have a little bit of knowledge on this, because you’ll remember that this was in a referendum back in 1991, if my memory serves me correctly. Around 1992, the NDP came into power. Around 1994, there was a committee made of it, the Deputy Chair of which was the past member for Surrey Green–Timbers, who was Sue Hammell. I think I’m allowed to say her name now, because she’s no longer here. It was an interesting one. We had conversations over this.

[5:20 p.m.]

Although I was in local government at the time, we had conversations over this, and the challenge she had was: how do you set criteria for recall and initiative that would be high enough to be a serious tool and not something that was used frivolously? Yet you also want it low enough so that it was actually possible, so that it actually could happen.

We’ve heard mentioned here in the House, by previous speakers, that in fact there have been 26 attempts at recall and only one has succeeded in having the member resign, which is the ultimate goal of recall. And that wasn’t because they got the votes. The votes weren’t counted, because the member resigned first. So we could say that all 26 attempts have been failures, even though the one did succeed, in the end, in seeing the member being removed.

What was the standard that she was a part of setting, as the Deputy Chair? I think it’s interesting, because the bar was set at 40 percent not of those who voted but of the registered voters in that riding. Now, if we just take a moment and look at voter turnout for the last two elections…. Let’s not go to ancient history. Let’s just work the last two elections, 2013 and 2017.

The voter turnout was 55.32 percent in 2013, and in 2017, it was 57.73 percent. I believe there were over half the members of the House that, in fact, had plurality. They had 50 percent plus one in order to get elected here. All they needed was 28 or 29 percent of the eligible voters to get into this House. But to get kicked out of this House, you need 40 percent. That’s kind of interesting. You need more people against you, signing on the dotted line to be against you, than you needed to get into this House. Absolutely amazing.

That was the bar she was a part of. She was in committee. I just refer to her simply because of my relationship with her. But the thing is, the committee set that. And they set that, I would argue, as a relatively high bar.

Now, again, I just find it absolutely amazing what comes out of the mouth of the leader of the Green Party, because he was talking about these millionaires who could come in here and steal our democracy from us and that’s why we need these amendments. Did he read the original bill? Did he go back to the original bill?

The original bill set limits on a recall campaign. It wasn’t that the sky was the limit. There was a limit set. The limit was $25,000 if you had 25,000 in your riding. If you had less than that, $25,000. If you had more than 25,000 people in your riding, then you got 25 cents for every voter over that.

Take my riding as an example. Back in the day, it was around 48,000, 49,000 people. That’s $25,000 plus, you know, divide that around to another 24, divide by four…. It’s $6,000. So $31,000 was the limit.

Interjection.

M. Hunt: Yeah, I know. It’s almost like proportional representation, but you know what it is when you’re doing it off the top of your head.

That was $31,000 as the limit that can be spent on a recall campaign. That doesn’t take a millionaire coming in from some foreign country to steal our election from us. That is not a lot of money. As a matter of fact, I’m trying to remember, but isn’t the new limit for our spending…? Well, the past limit for spending on our election was something like $75,000. I believe that in the future election, our limit is something like $58,000. Recall was only allowed $31,000. They were allowed less than half the money that we spent on an election.

And we’re not limited to the 30 days of our election writ, because you notice right now what’s going on federally. Right now, federally, we see the different parties already nominating their people and getting their people ready for the federal election which is a year away. So this work was done ahead of time, money spent ahead of time. And not only are we allowed to spend this money to get ourselves elected, but we have a whole party apparatus that is going as well.

[5:25 p.m.]

If you divide that by the 87 ridings and add it to ours, there’s a lot of money getting spent, or potentially being spent, on elections. But recall? It’s $31,000. This isn’t the rich of the world coming to steal democracy from us here in the province of British Columbia. I’m sorry. This just doesn’t line up with reality.

That’s the original bill. What do we have in these amendments? How many pages did I say? We have 45 pages of amendments. All you have to spend anyhow is $31,000. I’m sure that you’ll spend half of that $31,000 just hiring the accountants in order to fill out the forms and give the information that you need to give to do this.

Anyhow, that’s another thing. Bureaucracy is a wonderful thing at times.

There is also a limit to the availability of calling recall. Right now, of course, we know the current legislation says 18 months. Now, you’ve got to remember, at least in theory, we have 48 months between elections. There are only 48 months that we have the awesome privilege of serving in this House. Now we’ve said: “Okay. You’ve got to have enough time for whoever it is that you elected to really do a bad job.” Okay? So we’re going to give you 18 months. Recall can’t start for 18 months. So that, doing the quick math, leaves 30 months. There are 30 months in which recall could happen.

Well, one of the amendments that’s before us is to take six months off the back end of that one so that you can’t have recall six months before an election. Now we’re down to 24 months. We’re closing the window.

We’re also saying: “Well, actually, you can only have one recall process going on at a time.” I’m sorry. This is where my cynical nature just pops up. I really try hard to suppress it, but I’m sorry. I can’t do it.

I’ve got to sit there and say: “Well, if you think you have a potential of being recalled because you’ve done a bad job, all you really have to do is get somebody in the front of that line.” You know? I mean, get someone in the front of that line on the day, 18 months after the election. Make sure they get their letter in there, or whatever the application form is, and whatever the money is — I think it’s fifty bucks or something like that — and a couple of signatures. Get it in there in time, right at the stroke of nine o’clock, so that you can have your friend do the recall. Of course, we know what that’s going to be. It’s going to be sit around and do nothing.

That’s terribly cynical of me, isn’t it? But you know what? Let’s look at the recall for the good member for…. What is it? East Langley? Langley East?

Madame Speaker, can you help me out with what the riding is, the easterly riding in Langley? I keep getting lost. It used to be Aldergrove. Then it was Fort Langley. Is it Langley East now? Okay.

If we look at who is initiating this…. Gee, they created a Twitter account on October 3, and they’ve had three tweets, all on the same day, and there’s been no activity ever since. I mean, that doesn’t look like a legitimate recall campaign to me. That could just be a scarecrow, someone just popping up and saying: “Oh yes, I’m going to do it because….” Well, in this case, I want to make one happen or maybe I want to protect my friend or whatever.

I’m sorry. This is just crazy. This is absolutely crazy. Again, this can easily be manipulated.

Now, yes, we’re going to have the same cap that we have for donations, that $1,200. But isn’t it interesting that the $1,200 that goes for recall also goes against your donations to a political party? Boy, that’s an interesting one. We’re really going to make sure that we get very, very little money from anybody who’s in the political process involved in this.

[5:30 p.m.]

Then we have a cap for third-party groups. Now, I am really glad to see a cap for third-party groups. I wish that this government had created a cap for third-party groups in the municipal elections.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

If this government had made a cap for the spending of third-party groups, we might not have seen all of the advertising and the “paid volunteers” that the unions put out in the municipal elections, because $5,000 doesn’t go a long ways, Madame Speaker.

I’m sorry — Mr. Speaker. I’ll pause for a moment while the changeover happens, and I can change over in my mind as well.

Here, again, the limit for the campaign itself was $31,000. I can’t even send a letter to my constituents for these kinds of dollars. I mean, a $5,000 third-party cap…. I’m sorry. I just sent out my fall mailer to my constituency, and that cost me $10,000 to get Canada Post to send it out. I don’t know how a third-party advertiser is going to do anything for $5,000.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Except, of course, maybe that’s precisely the purpose of what’s before us — in order to stop the whole recall process, in order to kill it absolutely dead, in order to destroy the democratic rights of the citizens of this great province of British Columbia. There is just so much here. We said we want to keep big money out, but big money isn’t a part of recall because of the limits that are put in.

Then I have to ask the question, because, again, I’m trying to look at the set of legislation that this government has introduced. I’m looking at this in the context of how this is going to work if the government is successful and if the government, in fact, gets proportional representation. How in the world is recall going to actually work in that world?

I submit to you that it’s impossible — utterly, absolutely impossible. Because the one thing we do know is that under proportional representation, the ridings will be bigger. And $31,000 for the campaign itself and $5,000 for any third-party advertising — that’s gas money for travelling around some of these constituencies up in northern B.C. I’m sorry. That’s gas money.

I mean, the legislation says that it can include hotel expenses. Hotel expenses. It’s $31,000. This is not big money. It’s not about big money. It’s not about big money being involved. This is all about destroying the recall initiative absolutely. That’s what it’s all about.

When you view it in the context of all the legislation that is coming down, all the legislation that this government is doing…. Why don’t they just put up a bill and simply repeal it? Well, of course, because that becomes too obvious. So as a result, instead of a straight repeal, what they’re going to do is say: “We’ll improve it.”

I am opposed to Bill 53, and I thank you for the opportunity to speak to it.

J. Isaacs: Thank you to my colleague from Surrey-Cloverdale for his passionate delivery and comments.

I rise today to speak to Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act.

British Columbia is one of the most desired locations in the world to live. We have people moving here from other provinces and people moving here from other countries. While we have a beautiful landscape throughout the province, with so many exciting reasons why people want to live here, one of the major reasons that people want to live here is because of our democracy.

British Columbia is the sixth province to enter Confederation, and our electoral system has worked well. We have elected stable governments, and although we may disagree on some policies, most people have confidence in our democracy.

[5:35 p.m.]

We have a fair and representative voice that is available to all voters. We have built a prosperous and peaceful place that is the envy of the world. Yet we are seeing one of the greatest bait-and-switch programs that we have seen in our political system.

This government and their partners, the Green Party, want you to believe that they are there to fix policies. They promise you that they are working on behalf of you. Yet every step that they have taken is one more step towards eroding our democracy. That side of the House said they were getting big money out of municipal politics, but clearly, their promises have absolutely failed to line up with their actions.

We have just witnessed big money in politics during the recent municipal elections — union-endorsed candidates enjoying enormous support from union members and in a variety of ways. How is that getting big money out of politics? It is simply another bait-and-switch scheme. They have simply switched time for money, and they’ve tried to make you believe that millions of dollars are now funding recall campaigns, when this is not the case.

Right now British Columbians are voting in a referendum on proportional representation that proclaims it’s bringing more democracy to voters. They’ve gone as far as to claim that somehow, under this new system, every vote will count. But instead of more democracy for the people, this government and its friends in the Third Party are actually delivering more power to political parties.

For all of the talk of making every vote count, the reality is the real choices are being made well before election day and by a small cabal inside party headquarters. Every vote does count, and changing our system to proportional representation will not deliver better representation or better government. It is the pathway to less representation, less accountability and unstable, more expensive government.

It transfers the power from the people and gives the power to government. What that side of the House calls more democracy we can call an erosion of democracy. With MLAs selected and appointed from party lists, the power of political parties is embedded with the party. Party insiders will choose who is on the list, and they will likely be, as we have seen with this bill and with other bills that have been introduced, motivated by their own self-interests and not the interests of voters and citizens.

People will see their democratic rights wane, and the choices they make are pre-selected by a party and not by citizens. This is less democracy and not more.

The bill we are debating today is yet another example of how this government is undermining the very democracy that we have built over the years and is trying to make you believe that they are giving you better representation. They are claiming that they’re cleaning things up and bringing the rules in line with all the other changes that they have made.

When they talk about banning corporate and union donations, they’re really just talking about banning corporate donations. The union donations are full steam ahead, and they are coming in a number of ways — a dedicated volunteer pool, canvassers to drop literature, campaign teams and advisers, administrative staff, office space and unconstitutional agreements with preferred unions that shut out a segment of our workforce.

When British Columbians feel like they have had a bait-and-switch happen to them, they want to know that they have some recourse. Buyer’s remorse can happen, and when there’s a legitimate reason for citizens to take action, citizens should have a process in which they can recall their MLA.

British Columbians are proud of the Recall and Initiative Act. It is the grassroots of our democracy. Every British Columbian has the right to challenge an MLA and have them removed from office if there are enough people in their constituency that agree. But this Attorney General, through this bill, has essentially taken that right away from voters. He is using his power to change the rules in his favour in the middle of the game.

[5:40 p.m.]

Once again, we have to raise the question of why. Why the urgency to put this bill forward now, when there are so many other issues that government should be focusing on? It is easy to draw a conclusion based on the evidence we see before us. There is only one recall being initiated in the entire province right now, and it is the Attorney General’s home riding of Vancouver–Point Grey.

I guess we should expect that his motivations would be self-serving. After all, it is the same minister who tries to portray himself as the government’s independent and unbiased arbiter of electoral reform when, at the same time, he has clearly stated that he supports a change from our current voting system to proportional representation.

But it’s even bigger than that. This is the Attorney General of British Columbia putting forward a bill that affects himself as an MLA in the only riding in the province pushing forward a recall. I would expect that the Attorney General would have a higher fiduciary duty to ensure that citizens, particularly the citizens he represents in his own riding, would have the legal right to initiate a recall process if they choose to. It is shameful that the chief lawmaker in this province would put this bill in front of the House.

If this bill passes, MLAs would only be subject to a single recall campaign. Once one recall is attempted, there can be no other during the term of office. This government likes to shut down voices that don’t support them. By putting in this clause, only allowing one single recall campaign per term, the voices of constituents who legitimately want to engage in a recall campaign, perhaps for different reasons, will be shut out. Their democratic right will be taken away. This is hardly democracy. It is an attempt to undermine democracy and silence the voices that, under the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act, citizens have every right to proceed with.

This bill also seeks to take six months off the window for recall — the six months before a scheduled general election. This, too, limits the tools currently available to citizens. And if that isn’t enough to deter citizens, there are restrictions to spending limits, donor caps and advertising rules, excessive rules for registration and disclosing funding sources — all in an attempt to erode our democracy and shut out citizen voices.

I wonder if the Attorney General even considered that, in 26 tries, only a single recall has succeeded its goal. That’s not a high success rate. But it seems that the Attorney General isn’t going to take any chances in his riding, and thus the urgency to get this bill passed.

Well, I will stand up for citizens, regardless of past success rates for recall. Every citizen should have the opportunity for recall if they choose to move forward with that process. It is a citizen’s right to have the opportunity to recall an MLA. It is not the right of the Attorney General to limit the process, eroding citizens’ democratic right to recall an MLA.

I, along with my colleagues, will always fight to maintain our democracy. This bill is absolutely self-serving, and it is just one more step that the NDP and Greens are pushing through that erodes our democracy. I will not be supporting this bill.

D. Davies: It gives me great pleasure to rise here today and speak on Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act. I’m assuming that we’re looking at noting the time?

Mr. Speaker: A few minutes.

D. Davies: Well, I can go on for a few minutes if you wish, hon. Speaker.

I rise today to talk on Bill 53, the Recall and Initiative Amendment Act. I call it the CYA act.

[5:45 p.m.]

British Col­um­bians have an incredible amount of honour and proudness when we look at Canada’s democracy. Both my grandfathers served in the Second World War. I know that they were very proud to be Canadians and very proud to be representing Canadians when they served overseas. We look at Canada’s democracy today. We truly are the envy of the world.

We have one of the strongest democracies in the world here in Canada, here in British Columbia. People from around the world are trying to come to Canada. People that have come to Canada, become citizens of Canada, are absolutely blessed that they live in our strong democracy, our safe democracy that we’ve had since Confederation in this country.

Generally, Canada has elected very stable governments. Of course, we’re looking at another campaign right now about changing our electoral system, with the referendum on proportional representation. When we look at that and all the debate that we’re having around that change, and then we look at Bill 53, this Recall and Initiative Amendment Act, I see it as a slow whittling away of Canada’s democracy, slowly taking away each of the pieces that so many people have worked hard for, have put their lives on the line for.

This really worries me when, if you look at…. You can pick any dictionary definition. “Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” When I read that…. That was just the first one I picked off. I’m sure that we could look at any dictionary and find a very similar definition. When I look at that, it’s a system for the people.

When we look at this recall amendment act, I see it as government challenging that. This was put in place a number of years ago to give people more voice if they weren’t happy with the way the government was performing. Again, we’ve heard from my colleagues numerous times about the 26 times that this has been used in the past. Successful or not, it is a tool that citizens of British Columbia have at their disposal if they are not happy with their elected official.

Timing is everything about this bill. We’ve heard the word “conflict” talked about quite often. I can’t help but agree with those sentiments that so many people have made regarding conflict. When we’re talking about taking something that has been put in place to protect people’s democracy, to protect people, saying: “I’m not happy with my MLA” — or my elected official — “so therefore, I will move on and start a campaign against.”

With that, noting the hour, I’d like to reserve my place in this debate and call for adjournment.

D. Davies moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. R. Fleming moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until Monday, November 5, at 10 a.m.

The House adjourned at 5:48 p.m.