referendum

Exercise your right to vote

(news.gov.bc.ca)

British Columbians have been tasked, once again, with voting on whether or not to change our electoral system.

Until Nov. 30, we are being asked to choose what voting system we should use for provincial elections, whether to keep the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system or switch to one of three proportional representation (PR) voting systems offered on the ballot. This is our third referendum on electoral reform, the 2005 and 2009 votes having chosen the status quo rather than change to a single transferable vote system. While the STV forms a component of one of our choices this time around, it is not one of the systems being proposed.

The 24-page voter’s guide from Elections BC describes our current system, FPTP: “the province is divided into electoral districts and each district is represented by one member of the legislative assembly (MLA). Voters mark their ballot for one candidate. The candidate with the most votes in the district wins and represents the district in the legislature. The number of seats a party gets in the legislature equals the number of districts its candidates win.”

In PR, however, “the share of seats a political party wins in the legislative assembly is about the same as the party’s share of the popular vote. So, if a party receives 40 percent of the popular vote, they are likely to have about 40 percent of the seats in the legislature. There are many different voting systems that are designed to produce proportional results.”

Indeed, there are dozens of variations on the PR theme, and herein lies one of the problems with the 2018 referendum. British Columbians will be asked: 1) which system, FPTP or PR, should be used for provincial elections, and 2) if a PR system were to be adopted, which of three systems – mixed member, rural-urban or dual member – we would prefer. There will be no second referendum, as there was in New Zealand, asking us whether we would prefer FPTP or the majority-chosen type of PR, with its details fleshed out by a parliamentary, expert or other committee.

We are, in essence, being asked to take our best, semi-educated guess as to which of three vaguely described PR options might yield better results than FPTP. Several key factors are “to be determined” after the referendum results, if PR is chosen, such as how electoral boundaries will change, how candidate lists would be drawn up, the total number of MLAs to be elected, how coalition governments would be formed. All of these elements determine how effective a PR system will be in producing a more responsive, diverse and balanced government. And we will not have a direct say in these decisions.

There is no way in this limited amount of space that we can satisfactorily explain all of the PR systems being put forward in the referendum. Readers should go to elections.bc.ca/referendum for the basics and research as best they can. This may not yield satisfactory results, however, because only one of the referendum’s PR options is actually in use in other countries; the other two are theoretical at this point. Mixed member PR is used in New Zealand, Germany, Scotland, Mexico and other countries, while the rural-urban system combines approaches used in various countries and the dual-member version is akin to a system Prince Edward Island once used (but no longer does) and also, according to one pro-PR website, “echoes our own voting history,” as British Columbia had multi-member ridings until the 1990s.

So, what do to then if we treat this referendum as less of a choice between which PR system we prefer and more of a choice between keeping the status quo and changing to a new system?

Vote PR BC and the No BC Proportional Representation Society each received $500,000 in government funding to advocate for and against PR, respectively. However, you will find little in-depth information from these sources. Think tanks and other groups have tried to fill in the gaps of knowledge but, perhaps not surprisingly, there’s valid-sounding evidence on both sides of the issue. For each piece of evidence supporting PR – such as it will end adversarial politics and hold politicians more to account – there is an evidence-based opposite finding. How many of us will look at all the studies, check the sources and determine how rigorous and accurate the conclusions are? Likely very few of us.

For what it’s worth, among the supporters of PR, you will find the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the B.C. NDP and B.C. Green Party. Among those skeptical of it are the right-leaning Fraser Institute and the B.C. Liberals. At the end of the day, most of us will probably base our decision on the opinions of those people and organizations with whom we agree on other subjects. We also will consider what we know personally (as opposed to filtered through another researcher’s lens) of PR systems elsewhere in the world, such as in Israel – even though the specific Israeli form of PR is not one of those on the B.C. ballot, it is similar. Some of us might opt for change for change’s sake, and others will stick with the devil we know. It might comfort some voters to know that, if we choose change, there will be another referendum in two election cycles to see if we want to return to FPTP or stay the course.

Knowledge is power and we recommend that voters do the absolute best to educate themselves about the various alternatives. But don’t be discouraged if you’re still uncertain after your research. Both FPTP and PR have their strengths and weaknesses. However, a vital aspect of both FPTP and PR – and one that directly speaks to the health of our democracy no matter what the electoral system – is that people exercise their right to vote. Whatever your choice, please fill out your ballot when you get it in the mail.

BDS loses in SFU vote

SFU’s Teaching Support Staff Union voted 186 for and 227 against including a BDS campaign in the union’s bylaws and policies. (photo from RestfulC401 (WinterforceMedia) via commons.wikimedia.org)

The Vancouver Jewish community had another victory over the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement last week, this time at Simon Fraser University.

The university’s Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU), a union for teaching assistants, seasonal instructors and non-full-time staff, held a referendum May 15-19 on whether to include a BDS campaign against Israel in its bylaws and policies. The motion was defeated, with 186 TSSU members voting for BDS and 227 voting against it.

When Rabbi Philip Bregman, executive director of Hillel BC, first heard about the referendum, he and his team at Hillel BC were in the midst of fighting BDS at the University of British Columbia. “It was like whack-a-mole,” he said. “We were fighting two battles at the same time and, when we weren’t dealing with UBC, we were dealing with SFU!”

Bregman estimates TSSU has around 600 members and a key part of Hillel BC’s strategy was reaching those members. That was a challenge, given the fact that TSSU would not give Hillel BC access to its membership list. Instead, Hillel BC had to research each SFU faculty individually to find out who its teaching assistants were, and then communicated with them via email. “It was like we were fighting ghosts – we had to try figure out who the part- time professors and TAs were in order to reach their members,” he said.

Bregman and his team also sent a letter to SFU faculty members, explaining how dangerous it was for an academic institute to be boycotting other academic institutions. “We were trying to show members of the TSSU that this was not a smart thing for them to do,” he said.

The week of the referendum, Bregman and his team were on the SFU campus with a sign requesting that TSSU members approach them and have a conversation – and many of them did. TSSU tried to counter Hillel BC’s arguments, but their counter-arguments were weak, Bregman said.

Still, Bregman was certain the BDS campaign would be voted into policy. “The TSSU held all the cards. They wouldn’t let us know who their membership was and most of the information they sent out was pro-BDS,” he said.

On its website, however, amid the wording of the resolution and other background information, TSSU included four documents that laid out reasons why members should vote no to the BDS motion.

While the administration at SFU did not issue any statements about its position on the BDS referendum, it did reach out to Bregman. “They called me to ask what was happening on their campus,” he said. “I told the university administration that SFU would get a black eye if this thing passes. It really would have been catastrophic for the university.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Campus, church extremism

Last week, students at the University of British Columbia rejected a referendum question that would have urged the student society to boycott Israeli businesses and products.

But the news was by no means all good when the results came in last Friday night. In fact, more students voted yes in support of BDS (boycotts, divestment, sanctions) than voted no. The question was defeated effectively on a technicality, with the number of students voting yes failing to reach quorum. Therefore the question failed.

Students were asked: “Do you support your student union (AMS) in boycotting products and divesting from companies that support Israeli war crimes, illegal occupation and the oppression of Palestinians?” The yes side received 3,493 votes, 2,223 students voted no and 435 registered their abstentions. To pass, the vote required 4,130 yeses, representing eight percent of eligible students.

In this, too, there is good news and bad news. The low turnout indicates that students at the university have better things on their mind than the conflict between Israel and its neighbors. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the anti-Israel movement on college campuses in North America is comparatively small. Yet the damage this narrow group of extremists can do to the comfort and security of Jewish and Zionist students – and to the broader objective of an inclusive, welcoming environment – has been serious and detrimental.

The BDS movement has had few tangible successes and plenty of failures, if measured by their effectiveness at actually boycotting, divesting from or sanctioning anything. What they have been wildly successful at is spreading messages that single out Israel as the fountainhead of all things evil.

Also mixed news is the fact that, while campaigns like BDS are finding it difficult to rustle up serious numbers of equally agitated fellow travelers, Jewish students, too, are challenged in finding substantial numbers of allies when confronted with a campaign of targeted aggression against the Jewish homeland. There might be only a few thousand out of more than 50,000 students who succumb to anti-Israel messaging, but there are even fewer who observe that messaging and are moved to come to the aid of Israel – and/or Jewish students – when it is attacked in this fashion.

Which raises another issue facing our Vancouver community.

Later this month, Canadian Friends of Sabeel will hold a conference on “overcoming Christian Zionism.” Sabeel describes itself as an “ecumenical Palestinian liberation theology centre” that is “working for justice, peace and reconciliation in Palestine-Israel.” In reality, it is a group that promotes a misrepresentation of events in the Middle East. The conference slated for Vancouver is explicitly aimed at undermining Israel among its North American Christian supporters.

Conservative Christians have been among Israel’s most reliable bloc of friends in troubled times. Like any bedfellows, the Zionist-Christian alliance brings with it complexities. While some Christians use Zionism as a back door to evangelizing or view Christianity as a “successor” religion to Judaism, for example, there are also many in the Christian Zionist movement who respect the integrity of Judaism.

The upcoming conference is co-sponsored by three Christian churches.

The United Church of Canada, for decades but especially in recent years, has adopted a heavily anti-Israel approach to global affairs. Their sponsorship of this event is not surprising. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is also supporting this event, though this, too, is not shocking, given that the American branch of the Presbyterian Church has been beset by anti-Israel agitation and last year voted to divest itself of some Israeli holdings.

What is surprising – and worrisome – is the role of the Anglican Church of Canada as co-sponsor of this conference. Two years ago, the church passed a resolution that made some attempts at balance but was marred by typical anti-Israel boilerplate. With their co-sponsorship of this Sabeel event, the Anglican church has thrown itself unequivocally off the fence.

There are parallels between these two developments – the UBC vote and the involvement of erstwhile moderate Christian groups in a blatantly anti-Israel conference. The fact is, probably most active Anglicans, Presbyterians and United churchgoers have no idea what their national bodies are up to. Of the millions of Canadians represented by these three denominations, the vast majority probably do not have an opinion on – or do not agree with – the approach of this month’s conference. As we saw at UBC, the anti-Israel movement tends to be a small group of zealots who get involved in a legitimate body and turn it into a platform, a rabidly anti-Israel tail wagging an otherwise amicable dog.

Like the impact of anti-Israel extremism on campus, the involvement of mainline Christian groups in this anti-Israel conference shows how a small group of dedicated individuals can create nasty, lasting divisions in a multicultural community.