Submission MACANULTY-0709 (Online)

New Zealand has a certain number of seats set aside for representatives elected by a separate roll (i.e. voters list) for voters of Maori descent.  This is an option that these citizens can choose to adopt, or they can choose to vote from the general roll.  This seems like a good way to integrate the interests of aboriginal people into government, rather than relegating aboriginal issues to external negotiation, and I think it would be worth discussing as a strategy for BC.

The Scottish system selects their list representatives from eight regions around the country.  This seems like a good idea for BC because of the size of the province and the large differences in population density around the province.   Scotland has a similar problem where most of the population is concentrated in the narrow belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh with relatively few people in the rest of the country.  In the Scottish system, each region has its own set of party lists, which guarantees that voters in the sparsely populated areas get local representation rather than using national lists that would likely be skewed to the big cities.

If the list selection could be an open list system rather than closed lists, this would perhaps be a compromise solution for the significant number of STV proponents who have made submissions to the assembly.  One of the objectives of the STV system is to give voters more control over their representatives, rather than leaving it to party insiders to decide.  An open list system would provide this.  This could be presented on the ballot as an option.  It could also be possible for voters simply to choose their party preference.

The number of seats in the new legislature is a tricky problem to consider.  For similar populations to BC, Scotland and New Zealand have 129 and 120 seats respectively, both with slightly over half their seats elected by constituency and the rest by party list.  BC has a much greater area than either of these, having 9 times the area of Scotland and 3.5 times the area of New Zealand.  The larger size of BC would lead to an expectation of more representatives.  On the other hand, do we really want or need a legislature with 140 - 160 MLA's?  That is the number to consider if we want to keep the current 79 seats as they are and add 60 - 80 new seats to be elected by list.  The other option is to increase the size of our current constituencies, which may be difficult to do in cases where they are already very large geographically.  My preference would be for a compromise increase to something like 100 MLA's with corresponding increases to constituency size to make the ratios of seat types work effectively.