B.C. Local Government Elections Task Force

"Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world"

Archimedes, 220 BC

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With the hecticity of moving, plus keeping the regular Tuesday schedule for the series on ethics, I’ve let something slide that I meant to post on a long time ago.

The provincial government in B.C. convened a task force to study possible reform to how municipal elections are conducted in B.C.

Paul Willcocks had a good post on the topic, and Sacha, at Double Blind, expressed his opinion (which I 90% agree with) as well.

There are 6 topics under review:

· Campaign finance, including contribution/spending disclosure and limits, and tax credits
· Enforcement processes and outcomes
· Role of the chief electoral officer (B.C.) in local government elections
· Election cycle (term of office)
· Corporate vote
· Other agreed upon matters (e.g. matters raised in UBCM resolutions such as eligibility of local government volunteers to be candidates)

The website also provides discussion papers on all of these topics.

Due to my tardiness, the deadline for submissions is tomorrow (e.g. April 15) so if you have something you want to say to the government, do it quickly. Reform in how elections are conducted is the sort of thing that can have an impact far behind what seems apparent at first glance, as it influences who gets elected, which in turn influences all the policy that gets implemented and how our elected representatives behave and so on. My point is that I highly recommend anyone concerned about local governance in B.C. to make themselves heard, either email to:

localelectionstaskforce@gov.bc.ca

Or fill in the submission form

My submission is included below. On the off-chance that anyone wishes to use my words in their own submission, be my guest.

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Dear Task Force, please see the following for my comments on the topics under review, organized by topic:

Re: Campaign finance, including contribution/spending disclosure and limits, and tax credits

I believe that campaign contributions should only be made by individuals as opposed to organizations. Organizations represent special interests, whereas individuals reflect the full spectrum of human interests. Given that all organizations are comprised of individuals, there seems to be no reason to allow donations to be made by organizations. This would mean no campaign contributions from unions, corporations, charities, or other organizations.

Within the class of individuals, only those residing within a given community should be eligible to make donations.

In terms of personal contributions, I support legislation mandating (relatively high) contribution limits or at the least mandating timely (i.e. prior to the election) disclosure of any contributions exceeding a certain dollar threshold (e.g. $100). This could be supported by banning donations above the threshold from taking place within a certain time period (e.g. 7 days) prior to the election. Providing disclosure prior to the election would allow voters to take this information into consideration in their voting decisions.

Anonymous campaign contributions should be illegal above a low threshold (e.g. $20). Transparency is the friend of good government, secrecy is not.

I support public financing of electoral candidates for municipal elections (similar to the federal model), although I acknowledge that the implementation might be tricky in the non-party based world of municipal politics. One possibility would be to offer public financing of a flat amount, where this amount needs to be repaid by any candidate earning less than a certain percentage of the popular vote. This would keep the system relatively simple, avoid any bias for or against political parties and their members, and prevent people from running simply to collect the public subsidy.

Alternatively, passing legislation that enables municipal governments to set their own bylaws with respect to campaign finance laws would be a good first step.

The general principles of campaign finance should be the provision of a level playing field for all members of society, and the provision of as much information (on a timely basis) to the voters as current technology allows.


Re: Enforcement processes and outcomes

I do not feel I have the necessary experience or expertise to comment on this matter in a useful manner.


Re: Role of the chief electoral officer (B.C.) in local government elections

I do not see a need for elections BC to get significantly more involved in municipal elections. The one area where I see a possible benefit is in providing a central point of information collection and distribution. i.e. Elections BC could maintain a website/information service containing information relating to municipal elections (e.g. candidate eligibility rules, campaign finance rules, disclosure of contributions, etc.) across the province. This would help with ensuring that the information was widely accessibly and presented in a standardized format across the province.


Re: Election cycle (term of office)

The current election cycle of three years seems reasonable and I see no reason to fix this unbroken clock. Having said that, I don’t see that switching to a four year election cycle would really cause any serious harm either.


Re: Corporate vote

I am a strong believer in the principle of one person, one vote and do not believe that people who own corporations should be allowed to cast more votes than those who don't.

Aside from the practical difficulties, the fact that in a world of democracy it is almost unheard of for corporations to be allowed to vote and the fact that B.C. has tried this approach before and rejected it, the underlying rationale does not make any sense.

From the materials provided on the website, the primary rationale seems to be that by allowing corporations to vote, their interests will be taken into greater consideration. This is certainly true, but you could make the same argument for pets. If, for example, dog owners, were allowed one additional vote for every dog they owned, it seems likely that policies more beneficial to dogs would be implemented. This does not, however, seem like a reasonable approach. Just as there is no logical reason why the interests of dogs deserves special consideration that takes precedence over the principle of one-person, one-vote, so to, there is no logical reason why the interests of corporations deserves special consideration that takes precedence over the principle of one person, one vote.

Finally, I believe that anyone casting a vote should be a person who reflects the full range of human experience and emotion. A corporation, by nature, is specifically limited in focus to making a profit, whereas human voters consider a wide range of matters, from having a strong economy, to having an aesthetically pleasing built and natural environment, to human safety, to the legacy left for our children and so on. Allowing additional votes to be cast by entities that represent only one facet of the human experience (striving for material gain) without adding additional votes to entities that represent other facets of human experience will bias election results in favour of a certain aspect of humanity at the expense of other aspects.


Re: Other agreed upon matters (e.g. matters raised in UBCM resolutions such as eligibility of local government volunteers to be candidates)

No comment.

Thank you for your consideration of my comments,
Declan.

Carbon Tax Politics

For a change, here's a couple of observations on the politics of carbon taxes after watching two elections where it was a fairly significant issue:

Although you might think that making a carbon tax revenue neutral would be an effective tactic to neutralize the ‘tax grab’ line of attack, in practice people seem unwilling to buy into the notion of a carbon tax being revenue neutral.

The B.C. Liberal government, first elected in 2001, has done only one thing consistently throughout it’s 8 years in power – cut taxes. They’ve never shown any desire to increase taxes nor, at the time they introduced the carbon tax, did they have any need to do so. They specifically outlined the measures they would take to ensure the tax was revenue neutral including tracking and regular reporting with adjustments to the offsetting tax cuts as necessary to ensure no extra revenue was collected due to the carbon tax. On top of all that, they have a provincial media which is effectively an extension of their party. It's hard to imagine anyone ever making a more convincing case to an electorate that their carbon tax was indeed revenue neutral. And although it is difficult and risky to assume I know how things would have gone in the counterfactual situation where they did not take these measures, I don’t see that they got much of a payoff from all this effort to ensure revenue neutrality.

One of the bigger risks to support for the tax, both in B.C. and federally, was that other levels of government might come out in opposition, where their area would be hit relatively harder by the tax (for example).

Finally, one of the arguments against the tax from rural residents and people in smaller towns was that they had no option to reduce their carbon usage – where city folk had the option of taking transit, they had to drive everywhere.


So here's a suggestion: Future carbon tax proposals should scrap the notion of revenue neutrality and instead guarantee regional neutrality. Mandate that all revenue from the carbon tax will be returned to the region it was collected from, where it will be used exclusively for public transit development.

Note that this effectively downloads the real decision to local governments which can reduce their own transit funding and substitute in the money they get from the new tax - effectively make the tax back into a revenue neutral one for their area - or use the money for increased transit funding as 'intended'.

Of course it goes without saying that it is dumb to *campaign* on bringing in a carbon tax, that is the type of thing you do in your first or second year of being in charge...

Electoral Reform Plan to be Tabled

From the green party website I see that B.C. Green Party leader Adriane Carr met with Premier Gordon Campbell who reportedly said that

"he will be publicly tabling a plan in late August or early September of this year to pursue electoral reform."

Sounds good to me - it will be interesting to see what he comes up with - hopefully something which acknowledges that STV got a much higher percentage of votes than he or his majority government Liberal party did in the last election.

B.C. election televised debate

If, like me, you didn't watch the debate last night (I don't even have cable at the moment, plus I figure that TV and politics shouldn't mix - what's your excuse?), or you just want to see some commentary on what you saw, try here, here or here.

To me, televised debates always seem like a triumph of medium over message and the media coverage of them generally makes me feel sad for the state of our country so I tend to avoid them even when I do have cable. But at the same time I typically find all-candidates meetings to be fascinating and very worthwhile. I don't know if being there in person makes a difference or if it's just that the cautious, stick to the party line, try to get your opponent off their game approach which being on TV enforces makes leadership debates dull and irritating.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Blog - Undisciplined Thoughts on Just About Everything

Sometimes I feel as though my head is a giant tub filled with various thoughts about politics, the economy, society etc. and by starting this blog I have created an opening in the tub which allows some of those thoughts out. The problem is that the opening is tiny since, due to the effort required by choosing topics, finding links, organizing thoughts, constructing paragraphs, editing and so on, the amount of stuff which can actually be posted on is pretty small. And of course it doesn't help when your internet provider (Telus) leaves you disconnected for a week.

Besides this, spending a few days away from the internet made me want to have more variety in my posts. So I decided to do a little experiment and just type for a while on whatever topics have been on my mind lately with no discipline or real organization whatsoever.

Important! This last sentence was a warning that, even if you've made it this far into this self-indulgent post, you probably shouldn't really continue on. Proceed at your own risk of wasted time, keeping in mind that you're only young once.

So anyway, I've been thinking about the upcoming battle to (maybe) bring down the federal government. Is it just me or is it ridiculous that the health of some MP's could be a factor, since they may be too ill to get to the House of Commons? What century is this? I'm not keen on seeing the government fall since I'd like to at least see the legislation on Same Sex Marriage pass first, but I don't want to see it continue on because someone was too sick to vote.

Meanwhile, if this is true it's really sad - not to mention likely counter-productive. Bad enough when parties bribe their own members to keep them in line (did I mention we should shut down the Senate) - now they're bribing the opposition as well? Of course if it's not true, it's even more sad. I guess we'll see.

It seems like a bunch of people are re-considering voting Liberal under the sponsorship scandal circumstances but can't bring themselves to vote for the gays-are-separate-but-equal, made-in-Canada-solutions-to-Global-environmental-problems, cut-taxes-increase-spending-but-don't-worry-about-the-budget, ask-how-high-when-Americans-say-jump-and-tie-ourselves-ever-more-closely-to-their-dangerously-unstable-economy Conservatives or the surplusses-are-bad, fifty-point-government-plans-will-solve-every-problem, electoral-reform-is-was-will-be-our-#1-priority NDP party.

I'll probably explore my thoughts on the NDP in greater depth and more fairness in a later post (it's half written in draft already). For the Conservatives it seems like there is a disconnect between what voters want (a clone of the Liberals) and what the Conservatives want (a clone of the U.S.?). The time honoured approach would seem to be for the Conservatives to just pretend to be a clone of the Liberals for the purposes of getting elected and then do whatever they feel like once they are in charge. For now, while I welcome their move to the centre, I'll probably treat any Conservative promises on Child Care or Kyoto with a grain of salt or two.

Anyway, I invite people looking for alternatives to join me in voting Green in the next election. In moving to the Centre the Green party has positioned itself as being similar to the Liberal party but more innovative on the revenue/environmental side and more libertarian/easy-going/less-uptight/not-so-puritanical/call-it-what- you-will on social issues (such as marijuana legalization).

Moving on to provincial politics, B.C. votes in two weeks. The most important thing is for people to get out and vote 'Yes' to the referendum on switching the electoral system to the Single Transferable Vote. As a voter, I can't see why someone would favour a system which gives them very little choice over one which gives them a lot of choice. As a democrat I can't see why people would favour a system where there is a huge disconnect between the votes cast and the representatives elected over one where the distribution of seats in the legislature bears some resemblance to the votes cast.

Aside from the referendum, the 3 main parties contesting the election are the Liberals, NDP and the Greens. I've read all the platforms but need a couple of days to digest it all before posting in detail. A quick thought for now is that I wish (like always) that I could go for the 'make your own pasta' option where I get the Greenolini noodles with a creamy NDPfredo sauce and chunks of roasted Liberal on top.

On issues like RAV and the Olympics I favour the Liberal approach of supporting big projects that will make B.C. a better province long into the future. But then stuff like the ill-fated Coquihalla privatization plan shows how the Liberals get carried away with their ideology in the face of common sense.

Plus their attitude to the environment, the provincial park system, First Nations and Unions is way too extreme for me.

On Health Care everybody wants to spend more so there's not much to choose there. I do like the Green plan of shaping the tax system to lower taxes on stuff good for your health (i.e. sports equipment) and raise taxes on stuff bad for your health (like junk food). This will be a far more efficient approach to preventitive medicine than ad campaigns urging B.C. residents to eat their vegetables or whatever it is the NDP and Liberals seem to be planning on this front. The Green platform has a number of ideas I think are terrible (such as reducing university tuition to 0 eventually) but is also filled with a number of really good ideas (campaign finance reform being a standout).

Overall it's going to be a tough decision for me and may require some thought on various vote deciding methodologies (strategic voting, vote my conscience, marginal voting, flip a coin etc.). That's probably a topic for a post in itself as well.

Let's see, what else. This is kind of sad. The corporate battle to fence off information and charge people access to the info-petting zoo is continuing on all fronts. I'm guessing that public libraries will be the final victims of this trend. Rented a movie the other day (A Series of Unfortunate Events - great artwork on the credits but otherwise disappointing - Jim Carrey was especially irritating) and there was a big message at the beginning about how you wouldn't steal a TV so why would you download a pirated copy of a movie. Of course if my neighbour had a 60 inch TV and I could make a free copy for myself leaving his TV perfectly intact, I *would* do that. Any my neighbour wouldn't stop me. Talk about a lame analogy. Still, the whole copying=theft meme is the big media corporations' biggest weapon in trying to make people feel guilty about something they really shouldn't.

The NY Times had a long article last week about how TV makes you smarter (it's in the pay archive now). Basically the article took about 3,000 words to say that because years of intensive practice has made people better at watching TV (so now we like shows which are more complicated, have more storylines and explain things less than in the past) it must be making us smarter. No mention was made of how smart we could be if all those hours spent watching TV were spent reading. Or how much less fat people would be if they spent some of that time exercising. Or the implications of TV watching for consumerism, erasing the line between childhood and adulthood, levels of social capital, etc. etc. etc. If only Neil Postman was still alive he could have given that waste of space the smackdown it deserved.

Here's a question, does it seem logical that the person appointed by the U.S. to be ambassador to Canada should be someone who actually has some interest in the country? Is it better to have someone who knows nothing and thus comes in with no preconceptions? I think if I was appointing ambassadors I'd try to pick people with some knowledge of where they're going, especially for my country's closest neighbours. Maybe ambassadors are just irrelevant patronage appointments like Senators and I should just ignore them. Of course if I'm going to take this approach, I'd like our mainstream media to go along as well and not treat every pronouncement by the U.S. ambassador as front page news.

And finally, on a lighter note, some advice for all you blogging kids out there: don't walk between parked blogs, don't blog with your mouth full, wait at least an hour after eating before blogging, and never, never cover more than one topic in a single post.

Plagiarized B.C. Election Notes

The Green Party has released their platform, as has the NDP

I haven't had a chance to look at them yet, but ainge, over at lotusland has a look at the Green platform, and Sacha at Double Blind has some comments on the NDP.

Best line from ainge (on taxing junk food): "the civil libertarian inside me screams, 'let them eat cake' but ultimately, this platform does need to be financed, so let's make teenagers and fat people pick up the tab."

Now that's pragmatism!

Best line from Sacha (on the large picture of Carole James on the front of the NDP platform): "Whoever put that picture there needs to learn that you need to make sure the entire face is lit, since the shadows on the left hand side make her seem ominous and scary." (it's true).

Sacha's also on the lookout for a copy of the 2001 B.C. NDP platform (don't look at me, I didn't even live in B.C. then!) in case you have an electronic version lying around on your hard drive (or know where to find it online).

Government is not a Business - Part 1

The Liberal party in B.C. brought in it's latest budget a couple of days ago. Here is the unsurprisingly negative reaction from the NDP party.

The budget itself was pretty unremarkable. Tax relief for lower income people was welcome but still pretty meagre when compared to the tax cuts at the upper end of the income scale which were made in 2001. The rest of the budget consisted primarily of restoring some of the spending to various areas which have been cut over the last few years and trying to sell it as new spending. Overall, I don't think the Liberals management has been terrible, but circumstances are still showing that their initial tax cut in 2001 was too deep and that it should probably be partially (say 20%) rescinded.

The thing about the budget that really bothered me, is the claim that the government is forecasting surpluses for the next few years - a claim which is made by excluding capital spending from the government's balance sheet. As you can see from the budget summary here, the province's debt, while falling as a % of GDP, is still climbing as an absolute number. So to claim future surpluses as the budget does, and which the media reported as fact, seems wrong to me.

The government says that, "Borrowing for capital projects finances the building of schools, hospitals, roads and other social and economic assets. As these investments provide essential services over several years, the government, like the private sector, borrows to fund these projects and amortizes the costs over the assets' useful life." - but to me, there's a big difference between the way the private sector operates and the way the government operates.

For a business, it makes sense to exclude capital spending (e.g. building a hospital) from the calculation of profit (surplus) because capital spending creates an asset and the whole purpose of a business is to use it's assets to both the cover the cost of the money used to buy them (interest, if the money was borrowed) and to generate a profit on top of that. Whether the business is doing a good job of this can be measured by comparing its profit to its assets, calculating what is sensibly called the Return On Assets (ROA). If the assets are not generating an adequate return, they should be sold (or the business plan should be modified).

But for a government, building a school or a hospital or a road isn't going to generate a return which can be tracked back to that investment. There's no way of knowing for sure if there will ever be any profit (increased tax revenue or decreased spending for the government) which can be attributed to this investment and there's not much chance that these investments can be sold if they're not performing well. And as far as I can tell, the budget does not even try to measure the depreciation of all the government's assets and count that as an expense (although I could be wrong here - it's hard to say just by looking at what they've posted online).

In short, the government is not a business and it doesn't have any of the cultural or financial tools necessary to limit it's borrowing only to those items which generate an adequate return on investment or to track whether it's investments are earning an adequate return or to change course if they are not.

We recognize this distinction between government and business by identifying those areas of government activity which are like a business and isolating them in crown corporations which follow different financial rules from the rest of government.

So, I'm no expert on what typical practice is for governments around the world, but if you ask me, capital spending should be included in the general budget for a government, and if the total debt is going up, you're not running a surplus.

B.C. Liberal Government Going Green - Broccoli Green that is

Today was the day for the annual throne speech in B.C. (reaction from the globe and mail here - an NDP supporter's take on the speech here)

The biggest thing I took from the full text of the speech was that the B.C. government is in need of some good speech writers - I can't imagine how painful it would have been to listen to someone read this laundry list of everything the B.C. government has ever done or is thinking about doing, which included what must have been over a hundred references to how great B.C. is.

The next thing which struck me is that in it's five 'great' goals for the decade ahead...

• To make B.C. the best educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent.


• To lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness.


• To build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities, special needs, children at risk and seniors.


• To lead the world in sustainable environmental management, with the best air and water quality, and the best fisheries management, bar none.


• To create more jobs per capita than anywhere else in Canada.

... the government seems to be taking on some things it doesn't have much control over, most notably the healthy living and physical fitness.

For example, later on the speech reads, "it [the Government] will act now to increase by 20 per cent the proportion of British Columbians who eat the recommended daily level of fruit and vegetables."

As someone who has never eaten enough vegetables and probably never will, I am looking forward to seeing what the government has in store to try and succeed where all else (including my own efforts) has failed. A minor quibble perhaps but by definition, spending money on things you can't influence is a waste, so I prefer programs where the cause and effect is a little clearer and easier to measure.

Finally, the government really seems to be on the defensive over it's school funding, announcing a big funding increase for elementary/secondary funding while noting repeatedly that overall enrollment is down and at the same time promising to limit university tuition increases to inflation (nominal GDP growth seems like a better peg to me, but whatever).

All in all, this is a dull blog entry reflecting a dull speech which seemed more like an effort to cover off any political weaknesses prior to the upcoming election rather than a bold plan to create a 'golden decade'. (not that this is necessarily a bad thing - as Bush has proven, sometimes a bold Government plan is the worst outcome of all).