DELIBERATION PHASE: Weekend 1

Members of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform began their Deliberation Phase on Saturday September 11 and Sunday September 12, 2004.

The key feature on the Saturday: Presentations from nine people, each of whom had made a presentation during the series of 50 public hearings that the Assembly held, all over B.C., in May and June. Their presentations were deemed by a committee of members to be of special merit as presentations, and the nine were invited to present to the full Assembly.

In the following list, the speakers' names link to the documents they used on September 11 for their presentations, and provided to the Assembly. The speakers did not necessarily follow their texts word for word. In all but one case, the linked handout is a Word document; Julian West’s document is a PDF. Two speakers also used PowerPoint slides, and those are online as well.

Assembly members also gave written questions to seven of the nine presenters. The presenters later provided written responses as follows: Katherine Gordon, Bruce Hallsor, Tom Hoenisch, Nick Loenen, Ian McKinnon, Chris Morey, Julian West.  (The documents are all PDFs.)

Here are photos of the nine presenters in action. And here is biographical information on the presenters, as provided by them. (PDF file, 120KB)

If you'd like to see earlier information on their presentations at public hearings in May and June, we suggest you use the "Search" window at top right of this webpage, and search for the speaker by name.

»AUDIO AND VIDEO

Also online: audio and video coverage of the sessions and presentations from Weekend #1. You'll find Weekend #1 items at the bottom of that page. The page also includes links through which you can download any required program viewers and players.

» REFRESHER, AND QUESTIONS

On Sunday September 12, Dr. Ken Carty, the Assembly’s director of research, gave members a refresher on the pluses and minuses of electoral systems in use around the world. And as members began their deliberation, he asked such questions as: “Are there problems with the current electoral system? Do we know what they are? Is there an alternative that that would address those issues? What will be the new problems that the alternative will create? Will the ‘cure’ be worse than the disease?”

We have online his speaking notes (PDF, 335KB) and his PowerPoint slides (86KB).

» RANKING VALUES

After Dr. Carty's presentation, members discussed and ranked the values they saw as priorities in any new electoral system. They selected proportional representation, local representation and voter choice as their top three values.

They promised to revisit these values, and many others, on the road to their final recommendation. As one member stressed on September 12: "We recognized that we need a lot more discussion before we can come to a conclusion."  (And, as Assembly chair Jack Blaney says: "Nothing is decided until everything is decided.")

Here is the Assembly's news release wrapping up the weekend's meetings. And here are some of the newspaper columns that followed the weekend. As well, here is the official Record of Proceedings of the weekend. And the weekend's agenda.

» INFO ON OTHER MEETINGS

Info on other meetings in the members' Deliberation Phase: