Saturday afternoon's proportional representation debate was everything that is wrong about political discourse in this hyper-partisan era, where intelligent, well-meaning individuals discredit themselves, insult one another and cynically manipulate their audience with cheap shots, exaggerations, circular arguments and meaningless platitudes.
No wonder people are so turned off by politics today.
Peter Ewart, arguing for people to vote yes in favour of changing B.C.'s electoral process to proportional representation, and Suzanne Anton, encouraging voters to vote no and keep the current first-post-the-post, spent an hour talking past each other, rather than listening and responding to each other's points.
Ewart patronizingly dismissed most of Anton's points as "fairy tales." The only thing that would have made his condescension complete was to pat her on the head. He used the phrase multiple times but at no point actually explained why her arguments were, indeed, fairy tales.
Anton was no better, constantly reminding the audience that her experience as a Vancouver MLA means she understands government better than some Fair Vote advocate from Prince George. Her tone was the Van-splaining drone we've all heard so many times before, when someone from Vancouver flies up to the hinterland to edumacate us on the way the world works.
The irony is they both resorted to mirror-image arguments to support their cases.
The parties have too much control of the elected representatives under first-past-the-post, Ewart continuously insisted, but the winning candidates will have more power under PR to reflect the will of voters. Meanwhile, Anton constantly claimed that elected officials have plenty of automony under first-past-the-post but will lose that independence to party bosses under PR.
In other words, they were saying the same thing - excessive political party control of elected politicians is bad and representatives that represent their constituents fairly is good. So maybe the discussion should have been about how to lessen the role of political parties and boost the ability of representatives to publicly disagree with their leader and vote against their caucus.
The worst part about Saturday's debacle was the intentional effort to stir up emotional responses, rather than intellectual consideration, among the audience members.
Repeating one of the brochures distributed outside of the lecture hall, Anton said PR will allow for the election of Neo-Nazis and other extremists. That is true but then she took it too far. She argued that there's no way a Neo-Nazi candidate could win a seat in the legislature under first-past-the-post. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it couldn't. Nobody thought a few years ago that three Green MLAs could hold the balance of power in the legislature, either.
She then crossed way over the line, insinuating that the rise of extremism across the world was linked to the spread of PR.
Nice try.
Extremism is on the rise in democracies around the world because of globalization, mass immigration, ethnic and religious intolerance and economic and income inequality, big problems that easily overshadow how those democracies elect their political leaders.
Repeating the Fair Vote brochure, Ewart stressed that voters "feel" their MLAs listen to their party, not them, and they "feel" disenfranchised if they live in a region where all of the MLAs are part of government. What does it matter how voters feel? Are those feelings justified by fact? Ewart made no effort to prove that B.C. MLAs care more for their parties than for their constituents because not only is there no simple scientific way to prove that but also because centuries of parliamentary democracy clearly shows what voters do to incumbents who no longer accurately reflect their communities.
Both Ewart and Anton are thoughtful and knowledgeable individuals who want what's best for B.C. voters. If they had started from there, they might have engaged in a meaningful discussion, starting with admissions that neither electoral system is perfect and both are flawed.
How refreshing it would have been for Anton to admit that first past the post has produced some horrible distortions in the legislature, such as the 2001 provincial election, where the Liberals held 97.5 per cent of the seats with 58 per cent of the vote, the NDP held the other 2.5 per cent of the seats with 22 per cent of the vote and the Greens had no seats to show for getting more than 12 per cent of the votes.
In turn, how refreshing would it have been for Ewart to admit that proportional representation wouldn't have changed anything about that 2001 election. Gordon Campbell's Liberals would still have had a majority of the seats so they would not have had to work with the other parties in order to govern.
The referendum comes down to a simple choice between two imperfect electoral systems. Elect B.C. MLAs differently than before, despite the uncertainty over details that haven't been worked out for voters to consider, or stick with the current system, warts and all.
That's a choice that transcends party lines or political ideology.
Unfortunately, Saturday's debate provided little clarity to help voters make their decision.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
