NDP LACKS NEUTRALITY ON ELECTORAL REFORM

The New Democrats are refusing to release key information about their survey of public opinion on electoral reform, including how the questions were shaped and detailed breakdowns of the incoming answers from the public.

The online survey itself can be read as steering public opinion toward a favourable view of the NDP preference for proportional representation.

But in justifying the contents last week, Attorney General David Eby cited the “assistance” of a quartet of academic advisers, who “reviewed the questionnaire.”

Three of the four academics were on record as having expressed major concerns about the existing electoral system of first past the post.

Only one was a strong defender of the status quo system that Eby, his NDP colleagues and Green partners-in-power sharing are campaigning to overturn.

The four experts submitted their feedback in writing. Would the ministry make that correspondence public, so it would be possible to determine to what degree they approved the questions and to what degree the government accepted their advice? Not a chance, came the response from the Ministry of the Attorney General this week: “The request of the academics was to provide advice to government. The advice was not intended for public distribution.”

The public is left to guess to what degree the questions were shaped by the academics and to what degree they suit the view of a government bent on stacking the deck in favour of the outcome it prefers.

A second concern involves the feedback that will be gathered from the public about electoral reform and the uses to which it will be put by the New Democrats.

The plan is to conduct two surveys, one the online questionnaire that any member of the public can answer, the second involving an online panel assembled by the Ipsos polling firm.

“The Ipsos online panel will be made up of about 1,000 citizens from around the province of varying age, gender and ethnicity who will respond to the questionnaire to ensure government hears the views and perspectives of people beyond just those who have chosen to take the questionnaire,” according to the ministry. “The panel helps ensure that survey samples accurately reflect the makeup of the broader population based on census and other reliable data.”

I wondered about an independent check on the process.

Will the ministry release complete breakdowns of the data collected from the two surveys?

That would allow academics and others to analyze the responses and decide to what degree they support the conclusions drawn by the government.

But again not a chance.

Instead I was told an in-house “citizen’s engagement team will co-ordinate the preparation of the initial analysis of input gathered through the questionnaire, the questionnaire’s open commentary sections, and from submissions emailed by stakeholder groups, academics and citizens.

“A summary report will be provided to the ministry for compilation in a report with recommendations, which will be presented to the Attorney General,” the statement continued. “The Attorney General will review and approve the final report and recommendations, which will be made available to the public and presented to cabinet for debate and decision.”

Eby approved the questions and Eby will sign off on the conclusions and recommendations to the cabinet. Then having presided over the input, he will “recuse himself from cabinet debate and decision regarding the referendum.”

The recusal is part of the NDP insistence that Eby can serve as the “neutral arbiter” of the process, a claim that looks more dubious every day.

Several times this week, Eby took on the B.C. Liberals in the legislature over the controversial survey, holding nothing back.

“I have a unique role in this referendum process — to be neutral between the sides as best as possible in preparing this referendum,” he claimed at the outset of Wednesday’s question period before dropping the pose of neutrality in favour of a full-fledged partisan attack.

More than once, he cited news reports on B.C. Liberal referendums in which the party was branded “amateurish,” “stupid,” “immoral,” “racist,” and “hypocritical.”

He waded in to the Liberals for licensing “transnational money laundering ” a “9,000 per cent overrun” on the ICBC accounts, and the proliferation of tent cities during their watch in government, before adding “I don’t want to get into partisan political talk.” (Perish the thought!)

By that point, the New Democrats were pounding their desks and cheering him on, such were the satisfactions of a standup performance by one of the most able combatants on the government side.

All fair game in terms of the kind of stuff that gets tossed back and forth between government and Opposition on a daily basis. But well short of the standard of conduct for a self-proclaimed “neutral arbiter.”

Toward the end of his partisan tour de force Wednesday, Eby also had the temerity to claim that his consultation process was being done “in a fully transparent way.”

This from a minister who won’t release the input of the academics who signed off on the survey, nor commit to release all the data that will be assembled for independent scrutiny. The claim of transparency is as suspect as the notion of Eby as a neutral.

But that’s the problem with the New Democrats on proportional representation. They are so sure that their preferred system is morally superior to the status quo, they have scarce inclination to ensure a fair, open and independent process for bringing it about.

I have a unique role in this referendum process — to be neutral between the sides as best as possible in preparing this referendum.

DAVID EBY, attorney general