A bill that could strongly impact the province’s northern ridings has gone through a second reading, drawing support from the Liberal government and unanimous opposition from the NDP.
“Every eight years the provincial government, under legislation, has to get an electoral boundaries committee who goes out and reviews the boundaries in the province,” said South Peace MLA Mike Bernier. “Right now, representation by population is what their criteria is.”
This means that the provinces 85 ridings should be distributed equally based on population, leaving those rural ridings spanning a great distance to incorporate the same number of people as are represented within a cluster of city blocks.
“All of northern B.C. right now might only need three or four MLAs because that means we need to have 10 more MLAs in the lower mainland because that’s where the population is,” said Bernier.
Bill 2 — 2014 Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act seeks to guard representation in three zones within the province — 17 ridings out of the 85 total. The three ridings include Cariboo-Thompson Region, Columbia-Kootenay Region and North Region – encompassing Peace River North and Peace River South in addition to others.
“We want to ensure that, sure it is representation by population, but there has to be something built in to say for geographic reason, it’s not fair to assume you could get the same representation from an MLA if his or her riding is that big,” said Bernier.
NDP MLAs came out unanimously against Bill 2, both those representing urban and rural constituencies. One of the NDP’s suggestions was that it was the Liberal government’s attempt to hold on their own ridings.
“Out of the 17 ridings, 10 are Liberal and seven are NDP,” said Bernier. “It’s not like we’re trying to protect Liberal ridings, we’re trying to protect rural and remote, northern and interior British Columbians.”
Bernier noted that two elections ago there was a suggestion of combining Peace River South and Peace River North and he said, if Bill 2 does not go through, that is still a possibility when the electoral boundaries are redrawn.
“When they were talking about combining a lot of the northern regions, obviously I had to speak out strongly against that,” said Bernier. “The rural population, where most of the industrial activity is happening where most of the changes are happening, the last thing you want to do is take away the visual representation.”
Those opposed to the bill have suggested that removing the representation by population is undemocratic and argued that the province is stepping on the Electoral Boundaries Commission’s toes.
“We have to look beyond the whole representation by population as the only democratic way of being represented because for rural, that is not a fair representation,” said Bernier, adding that a number of his constituents don’t communicate through email and set up meetings and drive into his office. He said this sort of access would be challenged by increasing the already expansive electoral area.
Bernier noted that eight years ago, there were only 79 MLAs and on the Electoral Boundaries Commission’s suggestion that was extended to 85, so not to lose northern representation. He said Bill 2 does not seek to increase the number of seats from 85 but to provide a framework that ensure those 17 rural seats are not lost.
“What we have to do is to set the criteria for the Electoral Boundaries Commission to do their work,” said Bernier. “We’re not saying where the boundaries are going to go, we’re just saying protect those 17 seats.”
