LIBERALS DIG IN AGAINST NDP ELECTORAL CHANGES

While the candidates for the B.C. Liberal leadership disagree on some issues, they appear united in their determination to defeat the NDP-Green drive to change the electoral system.

“The fight of our lives,” candidate Andrew Wilkinson calls it, referring to the scheduled-for-fall 2018 referendum on proportional representation.

“British Columbians have already twice rejected changes to our voting system, but the NDP and Greens won’t take no for an answer,” says Michael Lee.

“Proportional representation will lead to more minority coalition governments, like the mess we have in Victoria right now.

“It will create uncertainty for the investment community, negatively impacting jobs, growth and our prosperity.”

Sam Sullivan takes an even darker view, predicting that proportional representation would create an opening “for a racist party, speaking on the floor of the legislature.”

“The fix is in,” complains Mike de Jong.

“They (the New Democrats) have decided, along with their junior partners in the Green Party, to impose a form of proportional representation that will not serve the interests of rural B.C.”

Expanding on the latter point, Todd Stone has drawn attention to how the NDP’s rules for the referendum would undercut the voting power of the North and Interior.

“The NDP has unveiled a shocking attack on our democracy and on rural British Columbians,” he declared in a video posted on his leadership website earlier this month.

The Kamloops MLA was referring to the NDP’s decision that the referendum will be decided by a simple majority, 50 per cent plus one, of the votes cast by mail ballot provincewide.

In previous referendums on electoral change, the “yes” vote needed to carry the day by 60 per cent provincewide as well as in 60 per cent of provincial ridings. The yes side almost met the test in 2005 but failed decisively in 2009.

Back to Stone: “The NDP’s plans mean a small percentage of people — mainly in urban centres — will dictate the results for the entire province.

“Rural B.C. will be effectively shut out of the process and will lose its say. This is not fair.”

Girding for the fight to defeat next year’s referendum is “the most immediate and important issue facing B.C. Liberals,” according to leadership candidate Dianne Watts.

“This legislation will divide British Columbians, taking seats out of rural B.C. and moving them into urban centres,” she said during a recent campaign stop in the Okanagan.

“Let’s be clear, proportional representation gives a bigger voice to one part of the province at the expense of the rest of B.C.”

Granted those comments are somewhat speculative at this point. The New Democrats have announced some of the parameters for the referendum such as the 50 per cent plus one threshold for approval.

But they’ve only hinted at others, leaving open the possibility of more than one question on the ballot, or a ranked voting system that could further stack the deck in favour of one form of proportional representation or another.

Still, some of the aforementioned speculation is valid, given that the New Democrats and the Greens have in the past endorsed the system known as mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation.

“Mixed” because if it were adopted, members of the legislature would henceforth be selected two ways.

About half of the complement would continue to be elected from a reduced number of local constituencies. The remainder would be drawn from at-large pools of candidates put forward by the parties themselves.

If a party were to win say 30 per cent of the vote provincewide but only 20 per cent of the local constituencies, its representation in the house would be topped up from the pool.

Constituency MLAs would continue to have local ties to the communities they represent. The tie would be weakened for those members representing the province at-large.

The reduction in local representation would have a disproportionate impact on rural, northern and Interior B.C.

Those regions, being dispersed in terms of communities and populations, are already more difficult to represent on the current 87-seat electoral map.

Consider the potential impact of the MMP option already floated as a possibility by a member of the current NDP government.

He has suggested that for individual constituencies, the province would save time and effort by adopting the boundaries that are already in place to elect B.C.’s 42-member complement in the federal parliament. The remaining 45 provincial MLAs would be selected from the pool.

Taking that scenario as an outcome, there would be a dramatic reduction in local representation, particularly in the regions being placed on alert by Stone and the other Liberals.

Currently, the Interior and North are represented by 23 seats in the legislature. That contingent would be reduced to just 10 if the New Democrats were to impose federal riding boundaries on the province.

The entire northern half of B.C. — from Haida Gwaii to Pouce Coupe and including much of Prince George — would be reduced from seven seats currently to just two. The Okanagan and the Kootenays, now with 11 seats, would drop to five. The Cariboo-Thompson would be reduced from five seats to three.

Other regions of the province would lose local representation as well, of course.

But New Democrats and their Green partners could readily be accused of not minding the reduction in local representation in the North and Interior, given that they hold only four seats there in the first place.

This legislation will divide British Columbians, taking seats out of rural B.C . ... proportional representation gives a bigger voice to one part of the province at the expense of the rest.