May 17 - time to choose

Editorial

The time remaining in this provincial election campaign is now measured in days and hours, instead of weeks or months. Though a significant chunk of voters seems as yet undecided – not only on candidates to support, but on the important referendum question on how we govern ourselves – by late Tuesday night, we should have the definitive answer to these unknowns.

Jewish candidates are few – we've found only two among the mainstream contending parties who identify themselves as such – though "Jewish issues" are more readily available. Priority concerns of the organized Jewish community have been raised via a series of initiatives by Canadian Jewish Congress, including a survey of the parties and a candidates forum held Monday night at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Though this election campaign has so far been dubbed one of this province's most boring, such adjectives are all relative. B.C. politics is rarely dull and if it seems so this time, it's because candidates and campaigners have acted fairly civilly this time, unlike some occasions in our history. There have been campaigns in this province during which one might have assumed the fate of our entire civilization was on the line, based on the seriousness with which British Columbians and our politicians took our elections.

British Columbia's passionate political environment resembles in many ways the vibrancy that has always animated Jewish political life – contemporary and historically; in the Diaspora and in Israel. Passions run high and the stakes are valuable.

The schisms are as clear as ever in British Columbia's notoriously polarized environment. Despite the name, the B.C. Liberal party has demonstrated few initiatives that would traditionally fall under the title liberal. The New Democrats, while trying to depict themselves as a refreshed and more moderate alternative under former Victoria school trustee Carole James, nevertheless remains the home of choice for the traditional melange of radical and leftist activists. The Green party, while appealing to a segment of voters, will have trouble electing more than one MLA even if they're lucky.

The choice British Columbians will make on May 17 is startlingly similar to the choices that have always faced us. Do you believe, as most B.C. Liberals do, that good government is one that governs least and that a healthy economy is an economy encouraged by government policy, but made possible by a relatively laissez-faire approach? Or do you believe that government has an obligation to intervene in the economic system to ensure that its profits are distributed in something verging on equitability?

In the end, how you vote will probably come down, in one way or another, to which of these economic scenarios you most agree with. Of course, there are extenuating factors. Personalities, strategic voting, specific policy concerns beyond these general orientations – all of these and more play some part in determining people's voting habits. But British Columbia remains, as much as ever, split on economic issues.

Where British Columbians have found a strange compatibility and an end to traditional polarization is on the matter of the referendum on the STV – single-transferable voting – initiative. Traditional enemies – former premiers Dave Barrett and Bill Bennett, for example – are united against the proposal, while other strange bedfellows have aligned together on the "yes" side. The proposal has merits and drawbacks, as does our existing system. The main attraction of STV is that it is more likely to reflect the variation in voters' intentions and less likely to result in massively skewed landslides of the sort we saw in 2001.

On the downside, the system would result in larger constituencies with multiple MLAs. Some ridings would be as much as seven times the size of current ridings, which would certainly have a negative impact on an MLA's effectiveness in representing their constituents and on the ability of voters to inform themselves on the variety of candidates on the much-longer, multi-member ballot.

There is plenty of information about the STV proposal on the B.C. government website (www.electionsbc.ca) that will help you decide whether the pros outweigh the cons, or vice versa.

Similarly, the candidates before you in this election each have their advantages and drawbacks. The B.C. Liberals can claim credit for the decent shape of the provincial economy and the NDP can claim the wealth is not being shared as much as it could be. How you vote depends on how you frame the question of this election. The answer is up to you.

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