CKNW Editorial
for April 17, 2000

After I interviewed Gordon Campbell last week I started to think about the over-all political situation in the country and I couldn’t help but conclude that this may be the best, and last, good opportunity we have to see the beginnings of major reforms to our electoral system. I hardly need remind this audience of where these changes are necessary – we all feel so utterly disconnected from the senior governments that for all intents and purposes our MPs and MLAs might just as well be appointed rather than elected.

This is a dangerously seductive situation – we don’t see the tyranny of the "soft" dictatorships in our ever day lives. There are no secret police nor government censors at work … we don’t have citizens disappearing into the night never to be heard of again. We have the trappings of democracy and a strange sort of political theatre where a pantomime of democracy is played out. Our MLAs and MPs pretend to debate weighty issues of state and we pretend that there really is a democratic form of government at work. It’s taken awhile but members of the public ate more and more seeing all this for the sham that it is.

So if we’re all content with this, why not just let it ride? Because we’re not content … the problem is we haven’t as a province and a nation yet fully focussed on what the problems are and how they can be solved. Government systems that move further and further from popular control are at the same time moving towards political disaster. We have taken our frustration out by holding politicians in high odour no matter what they do. We have moved from skepticism to raw cynicism. We’ve utterly lost contact with those that govern us so we lash out blindly at everything any government ever does, even when it’s good. And the reason for this is clear – there is no such thing as good policy if it doesn’t carry with it the impact of popular understanding if not approval and the public isn’t going to understand if they don’t feel as if they have participated.

This public resentment has led to frustration in government for they are trapped in this system and don’t know how to get out. They know it’s wrong but once in power, as very human people, they are reluctant to change the system that got them there. This frustration in the politician for the resentment shown them by the public has led to one man rule. The leader, recognizing that he cannot really govern by consensus in a system where in theory at least the government falls on a lost vote has forced the Commons and the Legislature to be responsible to him, not the other way around, lest they lose their jobs. This has spawned the spin doctor who works just as hard on keeping the government caucus docile as he does on putting the best spin possible on government policy.

You see the results of this at election time. The candidates don’t campaign on what they’ve accomplished or hope to accomplish as your representative but on the government record or the party platform. This reduces them to campaign by tiresome cliché … and again we go along.

Gordon Campbell is at least prepared to tackle the question of the electoral system which is extremely important. But it’s only one issue. For if we vastly improve the system by which we elect people but still have in place a system that makes the premier or prime minister a one person dictator in a legislature where the elected people are merely ciphers, we haven’t really gained all that much.

What shall we do? Well, we have two basic things that must be done … we must seek out public opinion on what if any reforms are required but at the same time we must inform that public opinion.

I hope you don’t take that last comment as elitist – it’s not intended to be. I’m simply saying that most citizens know in their gut something is wrong, want to see changes, but haven’t enough information to form a final opinion. We know from the Charlottetown Accord debate that people will read information and make a decision but the arguments must be in front of them.

I propose that the legislature, not the government, but the legislature choose a Commissioner for Reform in the same manner they choose an Ombudsman. It will be the duty of this Commissioner to develop policy alternatives both by seeking expert advice and public opinion. He will get this public opinion in all ways reasonable including public hearings. Each year he will make recommendations to the government to be debated by the legislature. Upon motion for a referendum on any recommendation, the House shall debate such motion and vote on it in secret ballot so that it does not become a matter of confidence and is truly a free vote. If it passes, a referendum shall be put to the people within six months.

I think that this answers a number of concerns. A jury selected by ballot is simply not likely to have within it the necessary expertise to raise much less deal with the issues. A commissioner, selected by the house upon the unanimous vote of a nominating committee would likely be a person interested in reform and able to draw from the community at large the collective wisdom it possesses acting upon well thought out propositions.

This, however, is the time. An election is coming within a year and we must demand that the major political parties commit to reform our we’ll have another elected five year dictatorship on our hands.

Reform must come slowly, but also surely; it must be doable in a technical sense and it must have the approval of the public.

I submit that my suggestion meets those criteria and that if implemented, British Columbia could lead the way in taking this country out of a system where the elected official is a mere cipher in a masquerade of democracy into the person representing the people’s power that he should be.