The B.C. legislature has set up a special committee to seek public input on democratic and electoral reform. This blog is adapted from Dogwood’s submission. To have your say, log in or create an account and submit your comments by 2 p.m. PT Friday, July 25. 

What do you call a place where 17 per cent of the population votes in a government – whose decisions are shaped by unseen lobbyists and bureaucrats? How about a province where citizens pay taxes, which our politicians then give to multinational oil and gas companies?

If British Columbia plans to keep calling itself a democracy, then it desperately needs to improve the systems of governance that underpin that democracy. 

Time and time again, our community’s efforts to push for a liveable future and a fairer society run into fundamental issues of governance where the interests of capital outweigh the interests of the people who live here. The climate emergency is just one example where the money and machinery of the state is currently being used to make the problem worse. We have to turn that around.

Democratic reform is also necessary to reduce the harm our colonial institutions do to Indigenous nations, lands and people. The 1858 proclamation of the Crown Colony of British Columbia was based on a legal fiction. But the power of our government is very real. Immigrants and descendants of immigrants  have a responsibility to rein it in – and make amends for the damage our leaders over the generations have facilitated.

We must reform our electoral system and continue to expand voting rights. We must grow beyond European democracy. And at a time when B.C. is once again at the centre of a global oil & gas boom, real democracy is about literal power.

Fix our broken voting system

Barely half of registered voters in B.C. cast a ballot in the 2020 election, to give a recent example. And registered voters accounted for only 68 per cent of the population. That suits the corporations and wealthy families that run our province just fine. In the end 899,388 people voted for NDP candidates, out of a provincial population of more than 5.1 million.

That means just 17 per cent of people voted for the governing party, even though all of us are affected by their decisions. In fact, you could argue that under our “First Past the Post” system, only voters who supported NDP candidates in ridings where they won actually contributed to the makeup of B.C.’s majority government. That would bring the number down to 13 per cent – including people who held their nose and voted “strategically”.

Dogwood has long been an advocate of proportional representation. It delivers a more diverse government, better policy decisions and higher voter turnout. In our increasingly polarized and isolated society – and as our closest neighbour descends into autocracy – we must consider all the tools available to bolster British Columbians’ declining faith and participation in democracy. 

Even under a dysfunctional system, it’s important to break down barriers to engagement and get as many people voting as possible. That’s why Dogwood staff and volunteers make non-partisan get-out-the-vote phone calls during elections.

Expand voting rights

It’s tempting to be cynical about a legislature that doesn’t represent 87 per cent of the people they rule over. There’s a meme on the Internet, incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, that says “if voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” But this is contradicted by B.C.’s long history of systematically denying exploited populations the right to vote.

White women, whose unpaid labour allowed the colony of British Columbia to establish itself, didn’t win the right to vote until 1917. Chinese, South Asian, Japanese and Indigenous people – who made up the large majority of workers in the province’s early years – were barred from voting by racist laws until 1947 and 1949.

B.C. still allows hundreds of thousands of people to work and pay taxes here, while denying them any say in the laws that govern their lives. Permanent residents and other non-citizens quite literally keep the province’s economy functioning, but have no voice at the ballot box.

The same goes for teenagers, who did things like stocking grocery shelves throughout the pandemic, or served food or operated cash registers while being screamed at by maskless customers. They can work at 15, drive a pickup truck or marry an adult at 16. But they are not allowed to touch a ballot until they turn 18.

This allows policymakers to ignore the most easily exploited workers in the province. It also helps keep voter turnout low. Although 18-24 year olds face many barriers to voting in Canada, jurisdictions that have lowered the voting age (as the UK has just done this month) have seen a rise in overall turnout. Voting in high school seems to help demystify the process and turn more people into lifelong voters.

Grow beyond European democracy

There are Indigenous systems of government that have been operating in B.C. since long before the creation of the English Parliament in 1215. For example, I was invited to attend the feast-hall at Hagwilget and witness a government that has stewarded the land and cared for its people far longer than our Westminster traditions. While elected band governments have jurisdiction on reserves under the Indian Act, traditional or hereditary systems continue to govern some Indigenous territories.

Those off-reserve territories are what comprise “Crown land” – the vast tracts of forest, rivers, lakes and mountains that define the place we live, and house the natural resources sought after by corporations. Letting industry call the shots has been a disaster for both ecosystems and human communities. The good news is there are older, more successful systems for managing the relationships between people, other living beings and land.

So long as there are non-Indigenous people living in B.C., we need our own laws and systems to govern our activities. But settler democracy will have to step back in many areas as Indigenous communities reassert their jurisdiction. That’s one reason Dogwood supports the B.C. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, and the important work of updating our laws to comply with UNDRIP. This, too, is part of reshaping our democracy.

Real democracy is about literal power

Just as Indigenous systems of government are challenging the Crown’s supremacy over the land in B.C., we need to regain control of the energy that drives our economy and daily lives. When it comes to megadams or pipelines, power is not a metaphor. The people who control our energy control us – and they know it.

Take  the case of General David Petraeus. When TC Energy sold their stake in the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the American corporation KKR swooped in to make a profit. They hired General Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and architect of the “troop surge” strategy in Iraq, to give the company what they called an “internal CIA” to ensure they got their projects done. It is no coincidence that the Gold Commander and Bronze Commander of the RCMP’s special unit policing the CGL pipeline route served with General Petraeus training police and paramilitaries in Afghanistan. 

When RCMP officers were unsure of how to approach Indigenous land defenders along that pipeline route, they did not call Crown lawyers for advice – they called CGL’s lawyers. That does not sound like the police force of a healthy and thriving democracy to me. 

The climate emergency requires us to find affordable, abundant, local renewable energy, so we can electrify buildings and vehicles and stop giving the oil and gas cartel taxpayer money. Reducing demand and displacing fossil fuels can disrupt the financial assumptions of these companies. It also cuts into the money and political capital they have to lobby politicians. Big Oil can’t threaten to “turn off the taps,” pull investment dollars or throw people out of work if we build distributed, decentralized energy systems that allow people to put down roots in the places they live.

Decolonize, Decarbonize, Democratize

These three pillars provide three different ways to think about the challenges facing our province. They are interrelated and interdependent. Democratizing B.C. requires decolonizing and decarbonizing our province at the same time.

The B.C. government has been hijacked by big polluters, which now suck $1 billion a year in subsidies out of us, the public. That’s twice what we spend on all climate policies and programs put together. So unsurprisingly, greenhouse gas emissions are still going up.

Reversing that trend means reforming our democratic system so that the long-term needs of the people and the land are valued more than the short-term demands of capital.

Equally important is the work of decolonizing our province. The reason we’re in this mess is because the Crown claims ownership of 95 per cent of the land in this province, and jurisdiction over all the timber, fresh water, wildlife, gold, coal, minerals, gas and oil. It leases that out to corporations, and protects them with police.

We can’t opt out of colonialism, just like we can’t opt out of the climate emergency. It affects all of us, and settlers in particular have a responsibility to use our property and privileges to combat both. This requires a reinvigoration of our democratic institutions, which begins with made-in-BC electoral reforms that forge consensus out of more than just 17% of people.