The Liberals’ P.R. problem

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homever emerges victorious as the new leader of the B.C. Liberals tonight has plenty of work to do in the weeks and months to repair fractured relationships within the party and unify MLAs against the Green Party-backed NDP government.

That will be the easy job, however, because the real work will be rebuilding trust with voters, particularly in the Lower Mainland. On the surface, it shouldn’t be that hard. Core support remains strong and losing power was one person’s fault - Christy Clark - just as she was solely responsible for winning in 2013. Replacing her arrogance and condescension with someone more appealing to voters should be all it takes to reclaim voter confidence.

If only.

Based on the leadership campaign, the B.C. Liberals haven’t learned their lesson.

To hear all but one of the leadership candidates, as well as most MLAs tell it, last summer’s fall of Clark’s government and the ascension of John Horgan’s NDP into office was constitutional trickery to steal the election. There is still not a lot of admitting among the party brain trust that the Liberals lost hold of the Legislature despite having the strongest economy in the country, far more cash in the bank than the NDP and a much more sophisticated campaign organization.

The only leadership candidate willing to consistently point that failure out has been Dianne Watts. While her male competitors have all – to varying degrees – defended Clark and the way last spring’s campaign unfolded, Watts has attracted plenty of grassroots support within the party by stressing that a significant bloc of voters lost faith in the Liberals. As the only leadership candidate not a sitting Liberal MLA, Watts has portrayed herself as the change agent, the outsider who can come in and fix the B.C. Liberal brand in time for the next election.

That’s much the same angle Clark took when she came out of the political wilderness to win the leadership after Gordon Campbell stepped down but that’s about the only similarity between Watts and Clark. Watts is nowhere near as charismatic, knowledgeable or articulate as Clark was on a bad day. Rightfully so, all of the leadership candidates have attacked Watts for her vague pronouncements and her lack of depth and understanding of the issues.

If any of the men become the new leader tonight, the B.C. Liberal caucus and the party brass will be relieved but a substantial portion of the party membership will worry about that person’s ability to regain voter support. If Watts wins, she will have to contend with a hostile caucus and party insiders who consider her unworthy to stand in Clark’s shadow, never mind fill her shoes.

Whoever wins still has to explain to a skeptical public why the Liberals – including all of the leadership candidates – are so adamantly against proportional representation and the referendum later this year. Although the Liberals will choose their new leader today with a ballot that asks party members to rank their three favourite candidates in order of preference, the party vehemently opposes the same kind of ballot for voters to use in a provincial election.

B.C. Liberal opposition to proportional representation has nothing to do with protecting the rights of voters and everything to do with preserving the status quo because it gives the right-of-centre a huge advantage at the polls. The Liberals are terrified that cozy arrangement, which allowed the Liberal/Social Credit bloc to win majorities in all but four elections over the last 50 years, will disappear in favour of a new political reality that will make single-party majorities much tougher to reach and push collaboration and coalitions as the new standard.

Proportional representation has many appealing qualities – well-used election model in dozens of democracies around the world, far more of the ballots cast count towards the winning candidates – but its advocates over exaggerate how dramatically it will change government. So long as MLAs are elected under a party banner, they will answer to the party leader and will cast virtually all of their votes accordingly. People who think proportional representation will give their MLA the freedom to vote against the party and better reflect the wishes of constituents are in for a major disappointment.

The problem with proportional representation isn’t that it’s too dramatic a change to the traditional first-past-the-post voting system, it’s that it doesn’t change the politics of government enough.

For proportional representation to truly work, political parties have be kicked aside, as well. Fortunately, there are two working models for such a system in Canada. In the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, there are no political parties and all candidates run as independents in their ridings. At the first meeting of the assembly after the election, the representatives choose a speaker, the premier and the cabinet, all by majority secret vote, meaning it can take multiple ballots to decide.

The remaining representatives then serve as the unofficial opposition, holding the premier and cabinet accountable and questioning their decisions. Best of all, the regular members outnumber the premier and cabinet, meaning they have to attract the support of some of the regular members for bills to pass into law.

It’s not perfect but if proportional representation supporters are serious about introducing a provincial system that makes votes count and makes elected officials far more accountable to their constituents, the governing model north of 60 has a lot going for it.

Good luck, however, finding a party leader in B.C., whether it’s Horgan, Andrew Weaver or tonight’s Liberal winner, who would support that.