Rafe Mair editorial on AM600

Hell of a fight over referendum

By Rafe Mair Broadcast on CKBD 600AM  on 29 October 2004 and posted on Rafe Online

There is going to be a hell of a fight over the referendum on changes to our electoral system … a fight which is going to be like the Charlottetown Accord in reverse … the establishment will fight the proposed changes tooth and nail.

Let’s look at why.

Labour and management both fear that their influence will be seriously eroded if they don’t have friends in a disciplined majority government or at least can look forward to that prospect.

They would much rather only have to lobby parties that are in power or may some day be there. The thought that there might be three or four parties in the legislature with some independents as well, requiring give and take, sends shivers down the spine of the major interest groups. What I’ve just said applies, in whole or in part, to all interest groups be they doctors, lawyers or indeed Indian Chiefs.

The NDP will hate a new system because while it would guarantee them a presence in the legislature it would, for as far as we dare look, be as a minority party which, to make a difference, would have to negotiate with other parties. Finding a consensus outside their own party (and often within it) does not come naturally to a party that is as much a movement as a political party and which has ironclad dogma supported by people who expect party discipline to be maintained.

The same can said of the Liberals because they too are a coalition with dogma attached. Both these parties have a built-in prejudice in favour of first past the post, content to lose outright as long as they also have a chance to win outright. Neither wants to negotiate policy but prefers to dictate it. Absolute power or absolute powerlessness is to be preferred to negotiated power.

There will be a lot of nonsense spouted in this campaign and the most popular will be that minority governments of coalitions are by nature weak. I think the answer to that accusation depends on how you see government working. If you like dictatorships held together by ironclad discipline, then first past the post is your bag. If you believe, notwithstanding such calamities as BCRIC and the fast ferries that majority governments make better decisions than ones reached by real debate, again you will want no change.

I don’t want that any more and let me just make this observation – almost the entire western world has minority governments. This is true of the United States where it is rare that the same party controls both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. Even when that happens, because of the nature of their system, no House or Senate leader can depend upon full party support.

It will be argued that if we change we will have great instability like in Italy and Israel. This ignores the fact that strict proportional representation with a very low threshold to attain seats is very different than what is proposed by the electoral commission. In countries like Germany and France which require that parties must get at least 5% of the vote to qualify for a seat, the sort of mess Israel and Italy get themselves into doesn’t happen. But we’re not talking Proportional Representation here but a system that will see a reduction in the power of the party.

Why do I say that?

Because STV system makes it much easier for an independent or small party to get elected.

Let’s take a five seat riding in the western half of Vancouver. One would normally expect a right wing party to collect all the seats. But would they? Suppose someone like Philip Owen, Gordon Gibson or even Larry Campbell were to run as independents … I’ll bet dollars to donuts many provincial Liberals would "save" a vote for one of them knowing that with their experience and track record they would be good MLAs in a legislature where cooperation and consensus building has taken over from party discipline.

It is said that people in multiple seat ridings would not have as good representation. This is nonsense.

Take a riding like Richmond which would probably lend itself to three members. You would now have three members who had to deal with the entire riding in order to get elected. Geoff Plant, for example, couldn’t afford to just look after people from his neighbourhood and social status and, again in a legislature where negotiation replaces dictatorship, no MLA could afford to be narrow minded and just curry favour with, for example, the left wing neighbourhoods. Indeed, under this system ridings become analogous to at large representation instead of ward.

We’ll talk a lot more about this in the months to come but let’s remember that whatever warts a new system has – and it will have warts – you will now have MLAs who must take you into account when making decisions.

Next week we’ll start getting informed as to just how a new system would work … how voting would work, how the ballots would be counted, and what experience in other countries teaches us.

I will make this point, not for the last time. Let us not make the perfect the enemy of reform. Whatever form of government we have and however we elect it we will always have plenty to bitch about. I seek a system where my MLA has the power to act in the legislature and not be bound to the leader of a party, and his cronies whether elected or not.

I must also add something you already know – if the establishment, by which I mean all special interest groups be they business, labour, professional, or the artsy fartsy crowd, is against reform it’s all but a certainty that reform is badly needed.

[© Copyright 20004  Rafe Mair  and Rafe Online . Reproduced here by permission of Rafe Mair.]