In October 2009, Premier Gordon Campbell announced that he would create a Task Force to consider reforms to the way that local government (ie, municipal, city, town, etc) elections are held in BC. The purpose of this task force (see details on the government website) is to review specific issues related to these elections and make recommendations for changes, with the intention that these changes would be considered and acted upon in time to be in force for the fall 2011 local elections.
The topics explicitly identified are (links lead to our discussions on each issue):
Voting Reform Needed: From our point of view, the most glaring omission from the above list is the voting system itself, which has come under fire in a number of places, most notably Vancouver. The current at-large voting system tends to produce near-sweeps for the winning party on about 40% popular support, so 60% of the population can end up with close to no representation on council.
Justice Berger Calls For Self-Determination: Fair Voting BC does not believe that a single type of voting system will necessarily be the best choice for all local jurisdictions across BC, but we believe very strongly that the citizens of each city or town should have the right to decide for themselves how they wish to elect their councillors. This point was made quite forcefully by Justice Thomas Berger in his 2004 Electoral Reform Commission report (Vancouver) where he called on Vancouver City Council to ask the province to change the Vancouver Charter to give Vancouver this freedom. Indeed, Council did make such an application to the province in March 2005.
FVBC Makes Similar Call: FVBC therefore calls on the Task Force to include the right of a city or town to choose its own voting system amongst the main issues they address.
Write a letter to your local city or town council along the lines of the following:
Dear [insert your council name here]:
As you are likely aware, Premier Gordon Campbell has established a Local Government Elections Task Force to review a number of issues to do with civic elections. I am writing to encourage [your city/town here] to coordinate a response to the Task Force on these issues to be based on a public consultation process similar to the one recently announced by Vancouver.
In addition, there is a significant oversight in the task force’s terms of reference – there is no mention there of giving local councils the flexibility to choose the voting system which best matches the local needs of its citizens. I therefore urge you to explicitly ask the Task Force to recommend changing the Local Government Act to allow each community to choose its own voting system.
Justice Tom Berger recommended this for Vancouver in his 2004 Electoral Reform Commission report and Vancouver has made this request to the province. Justice Berger explained his reasoning as follows:
“In my view, these [ie, electoral reform issues] should be matters over which the City Council should now have a measure of control currently not permitted by the Charter. If Council agrees, it should petition the provincial government to change the Charter [and, should the Legislature decide to extend this measure of control to other cities, the Local Government Act as well] in order to give the City greater flexibility in designing a system that best meets the needs and expectations of its citizens, as these change over time. This increasing empowerment of municipalities appears to be the emerging trend in other English speaking common law jurisdictions (emphasis ours; Berger mentions legislation in California and Illinois permitting cities to adopt alternative systems of voting, as well as the recent developments in New Zealand and Britain). ... The amendments I foresee should be framed sufficiently broadly to permit, at the very least, preferential voting on municipal ballots. This would provide sufficient flexibility to allow election by STV at large or in multi-member wards, and preferential balloting (IRV) in single member wards.”
Following this explanation, Berger then issued his Recommendation #12: “That Council seek amendment of the Vancouver Charter to permit elections to be conducted using systems of proportional representation.” Vancouver City Council under Mayor Larry Campbell affirmed a number of Justice Berger’s recommendations and passed a motion on March 15, 2005 asking the provincial government to amend the charter.
In summary, I urge you to:
- Plan to submit a response to the Local Government Elections Task Force and to conduct a public consultation process in preparing our community’s response, and
- Ask for changes to the Local Government Act to allow our community the right to, in future, choose whichever voting system best meets our local needs.
Yours,
[Your name here]
The Task Force is made up of three government (Liberal) MLAs and three officers of the Union of BC Municipalities. It currently plans to solicit input only by written means. FVBC recommends that the Task Force hold at least a small number of public meetings to solicit input and encourage media coverage, publish online submissions immediately upon receipt to encourage transparency (much the way the Citizens' Assembly did), and publish an interim report one month prior to the final deadline to allow for two weeks of public commentary before preparing their final submission.
On February 4 2010, FVBC, working in partnership with Think City, submitted a preliminary request to the Task Force [available as a PDF file] to address the four recommendations above: (1) address self-determination, (2) hold public meetings, (3) publish submissions immediately, and (4) publish an interim report.
Preliminary indications from the taskforce are that they are unwilling to agree to any of these four requests.
The Select Committee on Reform of the House
of Commons was appointed on 20 July 2009 to consider and report by 13
November 2009 on four specified matters:
Link for November 2009 report (HTML).
All of these changes are intended to weaken the power of the party whips. See commentary in The Guardian.