Dear Editor:
Re: B.C.'s unfair elections act, Bill 2 - 2014, The Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act.
The four North Shore electoral districts each have about 55,000 people; the Stikine electoral district has about 20,000 people (2011 census figures). Thus a vote in Stikine is worth nearly three votes in North or West Vancouver. Stikine is an extreme case, but there are nine electoral districts for which a vote is worth 50 per cent more than a vote on the North Shore.
Now, with Bill 2, the B.C. government is trying to legislate this disparity for the future. We should be outraged.
The argument for such a disparity in populations in the past was that it was needed to obtain effective representation in areas where communication was difficult. With modern communications this argument is no longer valid.
Real democracy means that each person has equal legislative power; in other words each person has an equal opportunity to affect legislation via his or her representative. No vote should have more or less impact than another. Voters, in some circumstances, may need help getting to equal, because of language, culture, poverty, remoteness etc. This is not a justification for giving them more legislative power. Instead, these voters should be provided with the resources needed to achieve their equal share of legislative power; this may be enabled by giving certain MLAs more resources.
Justice Beverley McLachlin in the 1991 Supreme Court of Canada case concerning Saskatchewan boundaries stated: "What are the conditions of effective representation? The first is relative parity of voting power. A system which dilutes one citizen's vote unduly as compared with another citizen's vote runs the risk of providing inadequate representation to the citizen whose vote is diluted. The legislative power of the citizen whose vote is diluted will be reduced, as may be access to and assistance from his or her representative. The result will be uneven and unfair representation."
Bill 2 will lead to exacerbating and entrenching an already uneven and unfair representation due to numerous and substantial unequal populations of electoral districts. This legislation is surely unconstitutional. It should be withdrawn.
There is something good that the B.C. government could do: let the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission make the final decision instead of the legislature, thus removing political interference from the process, as is done for federal electoral district boundaries.
David Huntley
Burnaby/New Westminster Citizens for Voting Equality
