The Written Word
for February 4, 2001

Tomorrow the Ad Hoc Committee for Constitutional Reform in BC will release it’s report and as the instigator of this committee I’d like to tell you something about it. (In fact, it is so "ad hoc’ that I’m not even certain that I have the name right!)

About 18 months ago, while in a Seattle used book store, I came across a book called "Miracle at Philadelphia, by Catherine Drinker Bowen which was the story of the famous constitutional conference that allowed the United States of America to become a nation, not merely a collection of jurisdictions. It’s a marvelous book and I urge everyone to read. What struck me was how these amazing men – and the collection of genius at this meeting chaired by George Washington was truly amazing, especially when you consider that the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was in France – made the process work. It worked because the state of Virginia brought with it a sample constitution that their House of Burgesses had approved. This document acted as a working paper against which comparisons and contrasts could be made. In all events, after reading this highly readable account of the legal formation of the United States I started to ponder our own situation.

My thoughts turned to my two allies of constitutional battles pas, the late and much lamented Mel Smith and Gordon Gibson. There seemed to be no prospect for reform of the Canadian constitution – thanks to the Liberals in general and Prime Minister Chretien in particular the constitution of Canada was in a state of extreme constipation. But why not reform the way we do things in BC? Mel and Gordon thought it was a good idea. Our thoughts on this matter quickly turned to former MLA Nick Loenen who has long urged electoral reform for BC. These men agreed with me that this was a decent idea and I then thought of former MLA and cabinet minister Gary Lauk who had been the only member of the NDP opposition when I was in government back in the 70s to show a keen interest in the constitutional issues of that day when Trudeau was patriating the constitution. Gary agreed to join us and the group began fairly regular meetings in a boardroom kindly donated by CKNW.

We started by presenting papers about what we thought should be done in various areas of governance, in the hopes we could come up with a constitutional model, and I think this produced some very interesting work. It was not long, however, before we realized that we were really in danger of missing the whole point. It was for the people of British Columbia to decide how they should govern themselves and that we could never possibly agree on a model constitution amongst ourselves. It then became an exercise of recommending just how the necessary public process could be done.

Upon one thing we were agreed – there must be an assembly and it must be elected. But this raised two points – how was it to be elected and how would it be driven?

We thought of many ideas. Divide BC into regions with so many from each region. But this would mean some pretty arbitrary decisions and, besides, when and how would these elections take place?

Eventually we came to the view that however imperfect it was, it made sense to have one delegate from each constituency, meaning 79 in all elected either at the time of a provincial election or in a separate election?

Would this then become political?

Who cares? We felt confident that even if it did electors would take matters seriously enough to select the best qualified person.

It was then thought that since this group would need a lot of technical assistance they might, amongst themselves, select another 25 making 100 in all.

The next recommendation was that a Constitutional Commissioner be appointed by the Legislature to "quarterback" the process. It would be his or her job to bring this constituent assembly together, make suggestions and generally act as the driving force behind the process. He would have a long term and would, of course, report to the legislature, not the government.

The argument will, of course, be raised that this assembly is too large. Perhaps it is. But for anything meaningful to happen, the deliberations must be seen as representing the people of BC not its elites, besides, in this electronic age there would not be the need for all 100 to meet face to face in order to make decisions. Moreover, it would be necessary, undoubtedly, to break the assembly into a number of committees which smaller units could meet more frequently.

It will be argued that this is too cumbersome. We thought a lot about that but decided that there was no answer to this if we wanted the constitutional recommendations to reflect the wishes of all people, regions and groups in the province.

It may be said that this would be expensive. The four of us who did the meeting – Mel Smith was too ill to attend but constantly made his presence known – had all had legislative experience and knew that the cost of the actual meetings of a legislature are very small in comparison to the big picture and we felt that many of the "expert members", apart from the normal stipend for members, would donate their expertness. We did feel, however, that members of the assembly ought to be paid.

I think I can speak for my colleagues, however, in saying that the key recommendation is the appointment of the Commissioner.