Vaughn Palmer: B.C. electoral changes could affect odds of another NDP early election call

VICTORIA — There were sighs of relief from some MLAs in both major parties this week when the electoral boundaries commission decided not to recommend the elimination of any existing seats in the legislature.

The outcome was a surprise.

Advance speculation suggested the independent commission could reduce the seat count in the North, Peace River, Cariboo and Kootenay regions to reflect population disparities.

The commission gave serious consideration to doing just that.

But in the end the three members — Supreme Court Justice Nitya Iyer, local government adviser Linda Tynan and Chief Electoral Officer Anton Boegman — decided those parts of the province were difficult enough to represent as is.

Here’s the commission’s rationale for maintaining the status quo seat count of six in the North.

“Although we examined options for adjusting electoral boundaries in this area, including consolidating the current six ridings into five, we are convinced that any such changes would deprive residents of these districts of effective representation,” they wrote.

“The very large geographic size of many of these ridings and their challenging terrain and weather, along with limited transportation options and poor internet connectivity, persuades us that it is truly necessary that they retain their current boundaries.”

The goal of ensuring “effective representation” allowed the commission to depart from the other principle that guides its work, namely providing fair representation by population.

“Effective representation recognizes that elected representatives not only sit in the legislature and vote, they also play a vital role in helping their constituents deal with government bodies,” wrote the commissioners in their report, released on Monday.

“The courts have called this the ombudsperson role. Everyone should have equivalent access to their elected representative, regardless of their riding’s geographic size, population density or infrastructure.”

Communication links are fragile to non-existent in some parts of B.C., as the commissioners themselves discovered during their tour of the province when their car broke down in an area with no cellphone coverage.

The other factor that saved those hinterland seats was a mandate from the NDP government.

It allowed the commissioners to add six seats to top up representation in the fastest-growing regions.

The six new seats ensured that all but five seats in the resulting 93-seat house fall within the preferred guidelines for fair representation — plus or minus 25 per cent of the average population count per riding.

The five seats that were preserved under the minus 25 per cent guideline are all in the north, two represented by New Democrats and three by B.C. Liberals.

The proposed six new seats are in Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, Langley, the Okanagan and the provincial capital region.

Five of the six are in areas where the New Democrats already hold most of the seats.

But that is to be expected, given the Liberal party’s dismal showing in those regions in the 2020 election.

Back when the Liberals were winning elections, they more than held their own in the fastest-growing parts of the province.

To return to power, they need to win back those regions, including the new seats and many old ones.

In addition to the proposed changes, the commission tweaked the boundaries of most other ridings to equalize population disparities.

But for all the effort at equalization, there remains a significant imbalance.

“The weight of a vote in the province’s least-populated riding will no longer be four times more than the weight of a vote in the province’s most densely populated riding,” advised the commission. “The difference will be about three to one.

“In our view, this is the necessary consequence of balancing the principles of representation by population with effective representation.”

Not considered by the commission — and not part of its mandate — was where to put the actual physical seats for those six additional MLAs in an already packed B.C. legislature.

NDP house leader Mike Farnworth has long joked that the solution is to replace desks with bleachers — like in a sports arena — or benches — like in the U.K. House of Commons. The day may be at hand if these recommendations are approved.

Next step for the commission is a round of public hearings on the recommendations in the preliminary report.

Some communities will try to persuade the commission that they are placed in the wrong riding.

Political parties will argue through surrogates for self-serving changes.

“We must not consider the impact of our proposals on particular parties or representatives,” cautions the commission.

If past practice is any guide, the partisan pitches will be ignored.

Nor will the commission be able to accommodate most calls for change from affected communities.

As laid out in some detail in the preliminary report, this first set of boundaries represents a delicate balancing act between competing guidelines and circumstances.

The final report, likely to retain most of the painstaking trade-offs in the first one, is due April 3.

It will then be up to the government to translate the recommendations into legislation.

Once approved by the legislature, the new electoral map has to be implemented by Elections B.C., a process that could take half a year or more.

Speculation has the New Democrats under a new leader going for an early election in 2023, instead of the legislated date of Oct. 19, 2024. A spring election would have to be held on the existing 87-seat electoral map.

If the government wants to run on the 93-seat boundaries, it would mean holding off the election call until the fall at the earliest.

vpalmer@postmedia.com