I have read your Assembly's Preliminary Statement to the People
of British Columbia with great interest and, as a British
Columbian, am pleased to respond to your invitation to submit a
modest submission.
As a member of the Policy Committee of the Kamloops constituency
of the former Reform Party, I was instrumental in our constituency
submitting a resolution on proportional representation to go before
one of our Policy Conventions in the late
1990s. I was ahead of my time, I suppose,
because it did not pass. I have a good feeling,
however, that your Assembly will spearhead proportional
representation not only in B.C., but in the rest of Canada -- for
it is long overdue.
To be succinct, I favour:-
1. The New Zealand
Mixed Member Proportional system over many others, but we could
probably improve upon it by some of the following points.
a. Require political parties to run
candidates in at least 66% of the ridings, not merely 50%, in order
to qualify for list seats.
b. I also would like to see the
percentage of overall votes a party needs to win party seats to be
a minimum of 5% - to avoid a French or Italian style fractured
legislature with too many tiny parties.
c. Regarding the party lists, I
feel these must be democratically elected, well ahead of the
election, in a transparent process so that the names can be subject
to public scrutiny. New Zealand uses a
closed
list system, but I favour an open one, where voters can actually
rank the candidates.
2. If we make the
thresholds for (a) and (b) above too easy to start with, our
legislature might have great difficulty tightening things up later,
and run the risk of having legislatures like Israel's or Italy's
with fragmented, deadlocked parliaments - and frequent
elections. We can always loosen things up
later -- that would be easy to do.
3. Alternatively, is
there any merit to limiting the number of parties permitted in the
legislature to, say, a maximum of five?!
Then the thresholds in (a) and (b) above could even be
eliminated.
4. I am also not in
favour of selecting parliamentarians based on race, sex or minority
groupings. Absolute ability to do this
important job, in my opinion, should be the only criteria in order
to select people with the highest qualifications -- otherwise you
run the very real risk of having second-raters running the
Province.
5. The Law Commission
of Canada recommended an MPP Voting System for Canada in a report
to Parliament this spring. Its five key
recommendations are all excellent and I am sure the Assembly will
be taking this report very seriously.
I am looking forward to December 15th and your
recommendations. Good luck.
Addition to the submission on 15 July 2004:
When countries move to a proportional system it
costs. The well-known American Economic
Review has produced a study on 80 democracies around the world
which showed that government spending increased approximately 6% of
GDP when they moved from a majoritarian to a proportional electoral
system. B.C. spends 22% of its GDP running
the government now -- so approx. 28% of GDP can be anticipated if
we switch. Alberta only spends 15% of its
GDP on its government expenses, by
comparison.
Whilst I want B.C. (and Canada) to move to a proportional
representation electoral system, I am not in favour of taxpayers
being soaked by millions of extra dollars to finance runaway
spending on an even larger
government that is forced to cater to many small
parties. So the answer is,
rather obviously, to put a brake on limitless government
spending. I learn that this can be
accomplished by tax and expenditure
limitation laws, which many US states have been using
for years -- and with great success, I gather.
If the Assembly recommends making the electoral system more
proportional, I hope it will simultaneously incorporate a
recommendation along the above lines in its Report, so that the
wallets of the taxpayers of the Province are protected.
Thank you - and good luck to all 160 of you.
levelCMS