The Proposals for Reform of the Legislature by Simpson, Huntingdon and Van Dongen

Bob Simpson, Vicki Huntingdon and John Van Dongen today released their proposals for democratic reform in BC.  If the NDP and Liberals do not adopt them they do not deserve to be elected in May.

• Move the fixed election date to the first Tuesday of October
• Ban corporate and union donations and only allow BC residents to contribute money
• Party leadership contests should be run by Elections BC
• Elect the speaker of the house by secret ballot
• Empower Legislative Committees
• Free votes in the Legislature   

I think all of them are good ideas and I can not see any good reason why any of these proposals should be opposed.   What I expect the Liberals and NDP to do with them is to ignore them and hope that they will go away.   If we do not hear from the Premier and Adrian Dix within a couple of days that they agree with the changes I can only assume that they do not want the changes.

One reason neither the government nor the official opposition will talk about these proposals is because political parties have little or no interest in any improvements to our democratic system.   All political parties should put democratic reforms ahead of the interests of the political party but I have no expectation of this happening.  Fundamentally, if the Liberals or the NDP do not embrace these changes neither party deserves to be elected.  Voting for either party is a vote against reform.

Personally I think we need a lot more changes than what these three MLAs have proposed.   As an example we need to see the power of the premier dramatically weakened.

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