Writing bills easier than passing them

Opposition MLAs have been passing the time waiting for government legislation by introducing their own bills, to the point the order paper is overflowing with them.

None of them are going anywhere, but they do provide a faint glimpse of what an NDP government has in mind.

They also show what Independent MLA Vicki Huntington and B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver would do if they ever found themselves on the other side of the aisle.

BC Liberals swallowed their aversion to red tape and introduced their first bill of the spring sitting on Monday, a change to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act that will set up a registration and licensing scheme for commercial breeders of cats and dogs. Irresponsible breeders periodically pop up as villains in media coverage. Premier Christy Clark promised the bill a year ago after two atrocity stories surfaced of animals living in deplorable conditions.

The law will eventually allow for regulations prescribing standards of care for all commercial dog and cat breeders.

It was bookended by two more private member’s bills, which will pile on top of more than a dozen others that have arrived in the past two weeks.

Weaver introduced the Endangered Species Act, saying it would help deal with the extinction crisis, for which humans are the driving force. He said: “If government or industry want to take actions that will result in a species going extinct, it is required to go through an independent, publicly disclosed board review.”

Then NDP MLA Michelle Mungall took another run — the sixth — at getting a poverty-reduction plan on the books, with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Inclusion Act.

“If we had a plan, government would have the structure in place to know when they are about to a make a poverty-creating policy and avoid such detrimental actions.”

You’d think making a “povertycreating policy” would be avoidable without a plan. But povertyreduction plans have become a must-have across Canada, although it’s hard to measure if they work.

Here are some of the other ideas from the file of “bills that are several MLAs short of ever getting passed.”

— The NDP is fronting the Get Big Money out of Politics Act, a bill to ban union and corporate donations to political parties.

The topic attracted a lot of attention in the past year as BC Liberals blithely continued raking in millions from people willing to pay thousands for facetime with Clark.

Liberals make far more off corporations than the NDP does off unions, which is no doubt part of the idea’s charm. The bill would also have Elections B.C. work out limits on individual donations.

Huntington matched that and raised, with a bill that would set the limit at $1,500 and apply to municipal politics, as well. She tossed in a ban on cabinet members attending fundraisers, as well.

— Weaver is pitching the idea of changing Family Day to the third Monday in February, from the second, to align with other jurisdictions. He said being out of sync keeps families apart, not together.

When Clark announced the holiday, it was originally going to be the third Monday, but the government had second thoughts after hearing from tourism operators that a synchronized holiday would just mean lineups and no-vacancy signs. An informal online poll got 2-1 support for the second Monday. But Weaver said the government caved in to “corporate lobbyists in the ski industry.”

Also on the topic of calendars, the NDP wants to change election day to the fall, to fit the budget schedule better.

— In separate moves, Weaver also introduced bills that would outlaw foreign entities from buying agricultural land over five acres without permission from cabinet, and pave the way for ride-sharing, something the government has had under consideration for a couple of years.

— The rest of the blizzard is mostly from the NDP and focused on electoral and parliamentary reform.

Opposition bills don’t qualify as election promises, but they do signal where the NDP is testing the waters. The biggest electoral-reform promise — a look at a new voting system — isn’t in bill form. They need to win under the old system before inventing a new one.

Les Leyne covers the legislature for the Victoria Times Colonist. Email: lleyne@timescolonist.com.