To the editor:
Re: "Three hot topics for the city," May 8.
Kudos to Mike Howell for highlighting the importance of electoral reform for Vancouver in the current provincial election campaign. Through our "Our City, Our Choices" campaign, Fair Voting BC is calling on Vancouver's MLAs to support council's nearly decade-long petition for expanded powers to modernize Vancouver's electoral process.
As Justice Thomas Berger originally said in 2004, the city needs "greater flexibility in designing a system that best meets the needs and expectations of its citizens" and "increasing empowerment of municipalities appears to be the emerging trend in other English-speaking common law jurisdictions." For example, New Zealand cities have been able to choose a more equitable voting system than our highly disproportional and exclusionary bloc voting system for over a decade, and the sky has not fallen in there.
Greater autonomy for the city is a non-partisan issue - each of the four times council has asked for more control over how we vote and who can contribute to campaigns, the vote has been unanimous, features supportive quotations and endorsements from mayors and councillors from all three major civic parties. As Senator and former mayor Larry Campbell wrote to us recently, "Canada's cities face increasing challenges and need more freedom to shape their election practices to better engage citizens and inspire trust.
It's well past time for Vancouver to be granted this power."
We agree, and call for the next government to at long last give Vancouver the power we need to improve city politics.
Antony Hodgson, President, Fair Voting BC
