Failure of electoral reform vote haunts the Greens

Furstenau can't blame just the NDP for failure of electoral reform vote

With a week to go in the campaign, Green Leader Sonia Furstenau is reflecting on one of the might-have-beens of the recent term of government.

“I would make the argument that had we succeeded in getting proportional representation we wouldn't be in this election right now,” she told a Postmedia editorial board this week.

“This election is about one party wanting all of the power. With proportional representation, you're basically agreeing that democracy is about sharing the responsibility of governing.”

Proportional representation, or PR, would make majorities less likely by giving each party the same share of the seats in the legislature as it garners in the popular vote.

The Green 17 per cent of the vote in the last election would have secured 15 of the 87 seats, as opposed to the three won under the status quo system known as first past the post.

British Columbians were given a chance to vote on PR in a referendum in the fall of 2018. The status quo carried the day handily, with 61 per cent in favour and only 39 per cent voting for the switch.

The defeat was attributed in part to a rushed campaign, an overly complex ballot and confusion among the options for reform.

Furstenau's what-if at the editorial board meeting sparked an exchange with political reporter and columnist Rob Shaw.

He reminded her how he and others suspected from the outset that the Greens were naive about the NDP'S supposed support for PR.

“Do you feel now that this is where they always wanted to go, which is to try to seize ultimate majority power and push you out?” asked Shaw.

“I've always tried to find ways to see if I can make you less cynical about politics,” replied Furstenau. “But I wish that you'd actually made me a bit more cynical back then about this particular issue.

“Because when I look back on it, it does feel like it was set up to not succeed,” she conceded. “It was too complicated. It was too open to being able to be made into something that people could fear. And now I think you're right: I think it wasn't set up to succeed.”

Furstenau's suspicion that the NDP crafted the referendum to fail echoed a comment from another PR supporter, Max Cameron, director of the centre for democratic institutions at the University of B.C.

“Instead of putting in place a process of broad public consultation that would have taken the issue out of the hands of politicians and let the public decide, the decision was made to hold a rushed referendum,” wrote Cameron in a piece published Thursday in The Vancouver Sun.

“Either the premier did not appreciate the complexity of the issue — and how hard it is to explain electoral systems to voters — or he had no real desire to change the electoral system.”

In addition to blaming the NDP, Furstenau ought to consider how her predecessor, Andrew Weaver, helped diminish the chances of success.

Weaver's lack of effort was highlighted by Matt Toner, the former deputy leader of the Greens, right after the referendum result was announced.

“A tremendous setback for the Greens,” said Toner in a morning-after-the-vote interview with host Gregor

Craigie on CBC Radio in Victoria. “The ground game was terrible and the results show that.”

He faulted the NDP for “playing power games” with the referendum, but didn't let the Greens off the hook.

Rather, he noted how Weaver waived the consultation provisions in the power-sharing agreement with the NDP. That left control of the referendum to David Eby, the NDP'S partisan attorney general.

“That was a terribly short-sighted choice,” said Toner. “We left ourselves at the mercy of whatever the process delivered.

“At the time, I thought this was a terrible idea,” disclosed Toner, who was still deputy leader to Weaver when the latter surrendered control to the New Democrats. “I couldn't believe they were recusing themselves.”

Weaver pretty much confirmed Toner's suspicion that his heart was not in the referendum process.

“It doesn't excite me,” he told Andrew Macleod of the Tyee. “I totally support this referendum, but it is not something I'm spending all my time on.”

Weaver would also say that PR was not one of the issues that got him into politics, never mind how for many Greens it was critical to their survival.

But in light of recent events, did Weaver even want the Greens to survive his leadership?

On the same day as Furstenau lamented the failure of PR, NDP Leader John Horgan posted a setup video of himself chatting up “my good friend” Andrew Weaver.

“I am going to miss you in the next parliament for sure,” he told a beaming Weaver, who had already endorsed him for re-election.

“But I know you are not going to be far away,” the premier added, which had me wondering if I there's a government appointment in the offing.

“I still have some green roots,” Weaver reminded him, a remark that would surely infuriate big “G” Greens.

Weaver, formerly an advocate of the virtues of power-sharing, now seems bent on assisting the NDP to obliterate the Green caucus.

Some Greens might suspect they're caught up in a plot worthy of spy novelist John le Carré. Except no need for them to hunt down Horgan's mole in their party; apparently his name was Andrew Weaver.

On the same day as Furstenau lamented the failure of (proportional representation), NDP Leader John Horgan posted a setup video of himself chatting up `my good friend' Andrew Weaver.