The Shotgun Blog
« Is Tim Hudak's "Cell Phone Brigade" a violation of privacy legislation? | Main | 5 arrested for waving Tamil Tigers flags in Britain »
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Seinfeld election hands threepeat to Campbell
It was in the end a Seinfeld election, an election about nothing. The campaign started off with some high profile environmentalists slagging the NDP for its promise to end the carbon tax and ended with a plea from Campbell to re-elect his government to help see BC through the worst global economic calamity since the Great Depression.
Along the way we had Ray Lam resigning as an NDP candidate because of a few inappropriate pictures on Facebook and John van Dongen resigning as Solicitor General because of too many speeding tickets. But in the end less than half of British Columbians could be bothered to vote in an election where they felt the choice was between cream of wheat and porridge.
The fact is that democracy is slowly dying in BC - from terminal boredom. Thanks to the internet and various social media any politician who has ever said or done anything inappropriate or perhaps even interesting is finding themselves weeded out of the political process either before or during a provincial election campaign.
Well known 24 Hours columnist and blogger Bill Tieleman has suggested that voting be made mandatory in BC. As someone who has voted in every election I strongly object to that idea. If you give people bland campaigns and politicians that aren’t allowed to say or do anything interesting then why should we be surprised when more than half the electorate doesn’t bother to vote?
The people who aren’t voting are sending a very strong message to the politicians; the problem is they aren’t listening. The public want MLAs who are actually allowed to do the job of representing their constituents
In Delta South Attorney General Wally Oppal is only at present two votes ahead of Independent candidate Vicki Huntington. In that riding both the NDP and Green vote collapsed, not because Huntington is left wing but because the people that generally vote for these left wing protest parties saw a chance to send someone to Victoria who would actually represent their interests rather than the interests of the Premier or the leader of the Official Opposition.
We need to revitalize parliamentary democracy in Canada and get more power back to the hands of voters and MLAs. First of all every party leader should have to face a recorded vote of confidence once a year from their caucus. That would make the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition far more mindful of the concerns of their fellow MLAs.
Secondly all cabinet appointments should be approved by caucus. Thus if a cabinet minister runs roughshod over backbench MLAs they may find themselves vetoed out of cabinet the next time a cabinet shuffle goes up for approval.
Independent votes should be made the norm not the exception. Imagine a Premier and cabinet that actually had to make sure the legislation they were proposing had the support of a majority of MLAs in the legislature rather than it just being a foregone conclusion. Also the parliamentary rules need to be changed so that unless it is the final vote on the provincial budget or a specific non confidence motion a defeat would not result in the government having to call an election.
Private members bills which are at present token statements of intent should be referred to legislative council that can rework them into proper legislation and time set aside for votes on these bills when they are brought back to the legislature. This might in turn lead to more bi-partisan support of legislation.
All of the aforementioned would greatly increase the functionality of the legislature and once again enable MLAs to do a much better job of representing their constituents and the collective interests of our province.
One thing the Premier could also do is pass legislating stating that whenever a vacancy occurs in the Federal Senate that a province wide election will be held to fill that position. I am sure that is a move that Prime Minister Stephen Harper would support and once firmly established as a precedent would eventually result in other provinces following suit and us actually having a democratically elected Senate in Canada.
Finally we need to make it much easier for referenda to happen here in BC. According to a recent Vancouver Sun poll 65% of British Columbians support the decriminalization of marijuana. So let’s have a vote on it. I am sure there are many other issues people might also want to see put forward in a province wide referendum.
The fact is that unless or until we flow some democratic power out of the Premier’s Office and back into cabinet, our MLAs and ultimately ourselves as citizens, voter turnout will continue to decline and deservedly so.
[Cross-posted at The Insider – BC Lobbyist]
Posted by Mike Geoghegan on May 16, 2009 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink
Comments
Bottom line: Campbell was elected because he was the better candidate, the proven candidate, the safest candidate. Carol James was none of these things.
I agree that Westminsterian parliaments are not very democratic compared with systems like America's.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2009-05-16 12:29:26 PM
The BC electorate is more at home with the slower pace of socialist evolution under the BC Liberals than they are with the NDP and Greens. Campbell was politically brilliant in legislating the (scientifically idiotic) Carbon tax as it suckered the NDP into opposing that Bill which helped drive away the Greens, splitting the left wing vote. The so-called Conservatives hadn't gained any momentum possibly because the electorate remembered what happenned when the BC Reform-Liberal split resulted in Glenn Clark's NDP Government.
If only the BC liberals were guilty of what the NPD and Greens accuse them of: privatization, laissez-faire regulations, etc they might be considered something better than the hold-your nose-and-vote Party.
Posted by: John Chittick | 2009-05-18 1:01:50 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.