Contact UsSearch
Click for Search Instructions
Home > Get Involved

Submission ATKINSON-0400 (Online)

Submission By Harry F Atkinson
AddressSaanichton, BC, Canada
Organization
Date20040514
CategoryCitizens' Assembly process, Democratic government
Abstract
Democracy in BC can only gain back some lustre by attacking the waste of 79 representatives who use the resources of our Province for self-aggrandizement while eroding services to the people who need them. [2 pages]

Submission Content
I am concerned that the Citizens' Assembly has been charged with gathering input regarding types of camels.  BC needs to review who and how many we allow to govern and may need a completely different type of animal.

Example; we have 8 times the provincial representatives as the State of California. We do not need that many politicians in the modern world of communications. We have gone from 75 prior to the last election, to 79 in the last election and an estimated 81 for the next. This is all compliments of an Electoral Boundaries Act that was conceived about a hundred years ago.

In a time when everyone must do more with less we have the anomaly of growing bloated numbers of political representation.

Your Assembly has not been given any parameters to look at the automatic increments in the Electoral Boundaries Act or to recommend governance changes to address the vast inequities of gender balance in government. I think your Assembly's time may have been better spent considering the relatively ineffective and wasteful representatives who lack statesmanship and do not seem to be useful for anything other than representing their particular party and special interest groups.

Nor have you the opportunity to review the three levels of governance and the growing power of the new city states in BC.

The question of costly and wasteful duplicated governing between Federal, Provincial and Municipal Poobaas is not addressed as well. Nor will it ever be by the people at the trough.

Our youth and thinking electorate have increasingly abandoned the system (low voter participation) as a result of the inherent corruption of party politics. Who really wants to participate in such a manipulative exercise?

Democracy is broke!

Premier Campbell is allowing your Assembly to put a little lipstick on those tired old hookers, the various political machines of BC.

My submission is that democracy can only gain back some lustre by attacking the waste of 79 representatives (soon to be 81) games players who use the resources of our Province for self aggrandizement while eroding services to the people who need them.

They say we can't afford health, education or seniors services, I wonder just who we can't and shouldn't afford? I think we should look closely and we will see that like the fable of Hans Christian Anderson our wasteful "Emperor" has no clothes.

When you have designed a two hump camel (proportional representation) or one hump camel (1st past the post) you may find that only considering camels may have limited your Assembly from dealing with more needed work. By the way, between the two camels I prefer the former.

I know I used the analogy of camels but your Machiavellian governmental excise may have also been to chase red herrings.

© 2003 Citizens' Assembly on Electoral ReformSite powered by levelCMSSite Map | Privacy Policy