New Democrats have been delivering passionate speeches lately about the fundamental importance of fair representation.
But Premier John Horgan is going into his fourth month of denying voters in Kelowna West any kind of representation at all.
The hypocrisy is a bit much. The NDP caucus has spent hours expounding on the higher principles of fair representation while congratulating themselves for introducing plans for a referendum on proportional representation next year.
All the while there’s an empty chair where an MLA representing 45,000 people should be sitting. They don’t have fair or proportional representation. They don’t have any representation at all.
It’s empty simply because it’s to the advantage of all those New Democrats who are so busy speaking about fairness.
Kelowna West is quite likely to vote Liberal again. The NDP and the Liberals are currently tied at 41 seats each, with three Greens and an independent Speaker. So simply for self-preservation, the NDP is going to freeze the riding’s voters out for as long as they can, which is six months.
You have to wonder how those sanctimonious NDP sermons are going over in Kelowna West. They don’t get to elect anyone to represent them on a crucial bill that’s all about representation, simply because the government wants to preserve its slim edge.
Former premier Christy Clark resigned her seat Aug. 4. It caught people off guard. So the NDP government, which had been in power for a few weeks by then, could be expected to take a few weeks to let people get organized. But there are no compelling reasons why the byelection shouldn’t have been called just after Labour Day. A legislative sitting was just around the corner. Kelowna West voters had as much right to be represented there as everybody else.
The only reasons they aren’t are the tactical advantages in the tied house, and the fact that Clark herself played similar games with byelection timing.
She waited almost until the last possible day to set by-elections for February 2016, to fill vacancies that opened the previous summer. Horgan protested then that voters there had been “abandoned.” She did something similar in 2012. (The only times Clark called fast byelections were when she herself needed a seat in the house.)
But the need to get even with a long-gone premier over the games she played is hardly a reason to strip voters of their basic right. If that’s the standard the high-minded NDP is holding to, it’s a pretty low bar.
Allowing for the 28-day campaign and the two weeks or so after the vote to certify the results, there should have been a new Kelowna West MLA sitting in the house two or three weeks ago.
That’s just about when debate on the electoral reform referendum bill started, which is where all the hypocrisy is building up.
“We should all work together for the best interests of everyone,” they’re saying. (Except Kelowna West.) “I would rather we have a system where everybody’s voice matters,” they say. (Except Kelowna West’s.)
Apart from representation in the house, the delay also extends the time that residents go without day-to-day services. The constituency office has been shut down and the staff laid off.
There was even talk about breaking the lease, before the Speaker’s office decided to maintain it. So taxpayers are renting a vacant, shut-down office in order to avoid wasting even more money by breaking the lease and starting a new one later.
West Kelowna Mayor Doug Findlater said he understands the dynamics of the thin mandate, but the lack of service is a real concern and citizens there are getting left out.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the weekend called four byelections. One of them is in Surrey to replace Diane Watts, who resigned just five weeks ago to run for the B.C. Liberal leadership.
Conservative MP Dan Albas is with Findlater in noticing the lack of service.
He said Monday: “If a scandal-plagued prime minister can find a way to call four byelections at once, I don’t see why John Horgan can’t call one.”
Back in the legislature, one New Democrat responded to Liberal criticism of the electoral referendum bill by saying: “We don’t need any lessons about clinging to power.”
He got that right.
