Given the absurdly tight time frame the British Columbia government imposed on Metro Vancouver mayors to organize a transit referendum, the all-important ballot question unveiled this week represents a laudable piece of work.
It ticked off most of the boxes that are crucial in the world of transit-funding votes. Firstly, it offers a clearly articulated vision of what the public will be getting if the plebiscite passes. Secondly, the mayors came up with a funding instrument – a half-point regional sales tax – that spreads the pain while not being too onerous. And, finally, the question itself is simple and to the point.
Compared with transit ballots in the United States, this one is a work of art. The design of some of transit measures held down south were so muddled and complicated, the initiatives were doomed to fail before voting even began. Metro Vancouver mayors were doubtlessly aware of just how critical the ballot language is and were determined not to submarine their chances of success by crafting a question people couldn't wrap their heads around.
Now the hard part begins.
The mayors and proxies, such as the Vancouver Board of Trade, are going to have to work fast and furiously to educate the broader public on the merits of their plan. In the U.S., it's common for the pro-initiative forces to have a year or longer to mount this kind of persuasion effort. The Yes forces in Metro Vancouver will have about three months. The mail-in ballot will be sent out in April and people will have six weeks to send it in. That's not a lot of time.
And the mayors will have opposition.
It looks like those against the measure will be led by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which seems to be more upset about the language on the ballot and who is funding the Yes drive than it does the proposed tax hike itself. But the federation does have an audience and is often effective in mounting protest campaigns, so the mayors already have a group with which to reckon.
It was a given that not everyone was going to like what the mayors came up with. Some believe the money for transit improvements should be raised through a vehicle levy, or increases in the carbon or gas tax. Each of those avenues presented problems. The fairest way was a slight nudge upward in the sales tax, which will contribute about $250-million a year toward the mayors' plan.
There have been concerns expressed that the ballot doesn't offer a guarantee that the tax hike will be revoked at the end of the 10-year life of the infrastructure program. Something may have to be done about that. But I also believe it could become a permanent instrument to fund transit into the future. Our needs aren't going to suddenly end in a decade. There will always be projects in need of funding in a fast-growing region like this one.
The Lower Mainland has suffered over the years from the fact TransLink does not have a guaranteed funding source that produces the kind of serious bucks that would allow for some thoughtful, forward-looking planning. In its absence, we've had a disjointed, ad hoc approach to transit policy making.
The mayors are still going to need to explore other funding options, such as road tolls. They're being considered much more seriously around the world as a legitimate method of both discouraging driving while at the same time raising money to cover future and existing transportation costs. And they need to be deliberated on here.
Three months is not a long time to mount a campaign to sell the merits of a tax increase, no matter how small the hike might seem. It's much easier to launch a movement against such a measure. But a defeat of this initiative will have grim consequences for an area that is getting more crowded and congested by the day.
The mayors have said there is no Plan B should this initiative go down to defeat. And what would that Plan B look like in the absence of any money to fund transit upgrades? No, this is it. If this referendum fails, it will be the fault of a stubborn provincial government, not the mayors. But it will be the public that will suffer the consequences.
Gary Mason