Thursday, September 26, 2002
A constitutional milestone in Canadian history - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- There isn’t much to compliment the provincial government on as of late. Even those of a right-wing bent are finding it very difficult to agree with the method to which Premier Campbell and his team are implementing this ‘new era’ for British Columbia. Last week however Attorney General Geoff Plant made the announcement that Gordon Gibson has been appointed to set forth the motions whereby a citizen’s assembly will be formed to look at the issue of electoral reform in British Columbia. With the appointment of Mr. Gibson, there isn’t much doubt that the government has done good.
Gordon Gibson is a distinguished British Columbian who has served as an aide to Pierre Trudeau, as an MLA in the Legislature and leader of the BC Liberal Party. In recent years he has been a columnist in the National Post, the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail. He’s ditched Liberal politics and is now a senior fellow of the right-wing Fraser Institute and has done much work examining the field of electoral reform. There have been some pooh-poohing the appointment of Mr. Gibson as he was a former Liberal, however he has long criticised the federal party to which he once belonged and so ably served.
Electoral reform seems something purely professorial and for the academics who seem mired in Political Science. However, the problems we have with our electoral system are the root of the troubles we see with governments that either get too big for us, that mismanage the public purse, or are just plain arrogant.
It’s very easy to get cynical right off the bat and say no great change will emerge from this process of having a citizen’s assembly. True, as governments are loath to change what are pretty comfortable settings to attain power. The Tony Blair Labour government in Britain, up to the 1997 election where the trounced the Tories, promised to engage in some electoral reform. Under Prime Minister Blair’s watch thus far, we’ve seen Britain’s Members of the European Union Parliament elected via a proportional representation mechanism. He commissioned Lord Jenkins of Hillhead (the former Roy Jenkins) to look into a new way of electing Members of Parliament, and Lord Jenkins made some recommendations that called for a change to the current ‘first past the post’ system. However, electoral reform isn’t really a priority of Mr. Blair’s at this time, nor in the future considering his large majority in Parliament.
In British Columbia, under the ‘first past the post’ system, as in any other Westminster Parliamentary system, one needn’t gain a majority of votes in a riding to win a seat. No, one can win a seat in the House of Commons by simply getting the most votes overall. It is therefore not unusual for a candidate to get a mere 35% of the popular vote, yet win, because he or she had at least one vote more than the next challenger. There are something like (I forget the exact number) 20-30 MPs in this current federal Parliament who actually gained more than 50% of the popular vote.
Look at Mr. Campbell and his Liberals’ win in May of 2001. They won 58% of the popular vote, yet they took 77 out of 79 seats in the Legislature. The NDP, who won 22% of the vote, captured only 2 seats, thus not even 3% of the seats in the House. The Green’s, who hit an all-time high of 11% took no seats at all. Of the proportional representation schemes going around, the most popular would see parties getting a number of seats proportion to the number of votes they got. Were the 2001 election’s results take literally, Mr. Campbell would have at least a majority in the House, the NDP would have more than two seats and the Green’s would have had members sitting in the House today.
Now proportional representation, as exampled above, has its foes. Italy, and their instability of government’s there is pointed as an example. Italians have had something like 48 different governments since the end of the Second World War. There is no semblance of stability, as party politics reigns supreme and parties are often brokering deals in an effort to keep another party from taking the reins of power.
Mr. Gibson’s task is not to decide whether we keep ‘first past the post’ or whether we dump that in favour of ‘PR.’ His task is to lay the foundation for the creation of a citizen’s assembly. It is an assembly that according to Mr. Gibson’s terms of reference from the government, whose members will be selected by random, much like a jury. His task until mid-December is to create the mechanism whereby that assembly will be created, figure out how big that assembly will be, and set forth the time table where the findings of the assembly can be taken to the general population hopefully by the May 2005 general election.
Mr. Gibson’s task is immense, however not so big that an esteemed gentleman like him cannot handle. Vaughn Palmer, in his Vancouver Sun column of yesterday, remarked that because of Mr. Gibson’s credentials, Mr. Campbell’s cabinet will be loath to disregard or ignore his recommendations.
This is a constitutional milestone for Canada. No other jurisdiction, least of all that of the federal government’s, has ever embarked on great change such as this. Now it could be that the citizen’s assembly could reject any call for ‘PR’ and just find that what we have now is fine; but at least we are looking into the issue, and be pleased we -- ourselves, our fellow citizens -- are to decide.
This process is being led by Gordon Gibson and his expertise in this field is unparalleled. In fact, two years ago, Mr. Gibson, along with Rafe Mair, Gary Lauk, Nick Loenen and the late Mel Smith, released an ad hoc report calling for constitutional change in this province. Though we’re only looking at electoral reform, it’s a splendid start. Hopefully electoral reform will lead to democratic reform, and hopefully move east from here to that bunch in Ottawa.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .