Election reform the wild card B.C. has been waiting to see

Iam calling shenanigans on you, New Democratic government of British Columbia. National big- picture columnists who have jobs like mine, but who are less cynical and truculent, keep writing giddy think pieces about the prospect of a referendum on proportional representation that is supposed to happen in B.C. before Nov. 30 of this year. The awkwardly divided B.C. legislature has passed a law that says so, and I have no doubt it will happen. I also notice that April is coming up fast, and it’ ll be late May before you know it, and you know how fast summer whizzes by ...

Yet the details of the referendum, most notably the question or questions that are going to appear on the mail- in ballot, have yet to be spilled by B.C.’s government. And the details, as we all know, are where the devil makes his domicile. The law requires that the referendum be held, but the New Democrats have left the writing of the question or questions to their own attorney general, without explicit involvement from an independent official or any representation from civil society.

I hate to use a clunky legalistic phrase like “question or questions,” but the Electoral Reform Referendum 2018 Act is terribly non- specific about this ballot. The law says that “the result of the referendum is binding on the government” only if more than 50 per cent of the validly cast ballots “vote the same way on a question stated, if the question has the option of two answers, or are in favour of the same voting system, if a question has the option of more than two answers.”

After prolonged attempts to focus my eyes on this passage and make sense of it, all I can say with confidence is that a question with more than two answers is obviously contemplated there. The simple 50-per-cent threshold in the legislation has provoked complaint among opponents of proportional representation, because it could allow the votes of one region to decide on a voting system for a whole province whose regions are notoriously dissimilar. The other side of this is that any question with more than two choices may make the threshold nearly impossible to hit. ( It would scarcely be a slam-dunk any- way: B.C. voters were given a binary choice in the 2009 reform referendum, and reform lost 61-39.)

The written pact between the New Democrats and the Greens, on whom the NDP has relied for its parliamentary majority, specifies that the two parties will “work together in good faith” to choose a single “form of proportional representation” and to “campaign actively in support” of that single alternative. That “actively” seems like it might be difficult to enforce, but the question I have is this: is the NDPGreen deal really still in effect anyway? When I look at the headlines from B.C., what I notice is Green Leader Andrew Weaver stamping his feet and babbling a little incoherently about the government’s plans for liquid natur- al gas (LNG) export development in B.C.’s northwest.

The plans have been announced, and Weaver says they are unacceptable, but he says he wants to give Premier John Horgan a chance to have a magical change of heart before they come before the legislature. “If (a re- vised climate plan) doesn’t come in the fall,” he says, “we no longer have confidence in this government.” Sadly for Weaver, the government will surely be able to pass LNG legislation with the support of the assembly’s many Liberal members, seeing as the Liberals are pretty much the LNG Party. And since the government controls the parliamentary agenda, there seems to be no way for Weaver to force a non- confidence motion between now and spring 2019.

In the meantime, that election reform referendum, which was the key concession for which Weaver negotiated last spring, is still a blank canvas. Weaver has, at the very least, singed the edges of the GreeNDP deal before the good faith of the New Democrats is solemnized by means of a specific ballot design ( along with criteria for how a multiplequestion ballot will be handled and counted, which is something else that has been left up to the attorney general).

I don’t want to be too cyn- ical about this. Maybe the NDP will follow its democratic heart and offer B. C. voters a simple up- or- down choice with one clear alternative system on the ballot. Maybe the party will campaign for the alternative as “actively” as it has promised. And maybe it won’t be tempted to offer a form of “proportional representation” that imposes a high minimum threshold for legislature seats. ( On the evidence of past elections, a threshold of 10 per cent would make life a bit awkward for the Greens, although they earned a 17-percent share of the vote last year.)

If all of this pans out, it would be a likely recipe for a near-permanent Green presence in New Democrat- led B.C. governments. So I guess that’s the other “maybe” here. Maybe negotiating and working with the Greens has been so gosh- darned pleasant and educational for the NDP that it is willing to accept the idea of having to do so more or less forever.

IS THE NDP-GREEN DEAL REALLY STILL IN EFFECT ANYWAY?