Vancouver should move to a proportional-representation system for its civic elections, allow immigrants who aren’t yet citizens to vote and place tighter controls on campaign finance, including asking councillors to excuse themselves from decisions that involve their donors, says an independent report commissioned by the city.
Vancouver should move to a proportional-representation system for its civic elections, allow immigrants who aren't yet citizens to vote and place tighter controls on campaign finance, including asking councillors to excuse themselves from decisions that involve their donors, says an independent report commissioned by the city.
The report, which will be considered by council on Tuesday, proposes widespread changes to local elections, which have suffered from poor turnout in recent years as the amount of money spent by campaigns skyrocketed. Politicians in the city have also faced increasing scrutiny over council approvals of projects whose developers are among the largest donors to the city's political parties.
However, the city could not implement any of those changes without the support of the provincial government, which has previously been reluctant to tighten campaign-finance rules, either at the local or provincial levels.
The recommendation to change the city's code of conduct by barring councillors from voting on projects involving their donors could prohibit many councillors from voting on many issues that come before council.
"Municipal elected officials make decisions on developments proposed by campaign contributors and on contracts with unions that contributed directly or indirectly to their campaigns, creating an appearance of conflict of interest that undermines public confidence in the electoral system and depresses turnout," the report said.
The report cited three examples of the current ruling party, Vision Vancouver, getting donations from developers or unions around the same time that the city – in one case, the development-permit board, which does not have elected members – was making decisions about approvals or contracts.
The 12-member independent elections task force was set in motion by city council a year ago, as part of an effort to encourage more citizen participation and boost voter turnout in elections to 60 per cent by 2025.
In recent Vancouver elections, turnout has varied between 40 per cent and 50 per cent. In 2014, it was at 44 per cent.
Turnout in other Lower Mainland municipalities was typically lower, with Surrey at around 30 per cent.
At the same time, the cost of the campaigns has soared in recent years, with each of the two major parties – Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association – raising and spending more than $2-million apiece, with significant chunks of money coming from development and construction companies.
In the past decade, all of Vancouver's civic parties have supported initiatives to limit the amount any one person can give and to ban union and corporate donations.
However, the province, which has to amend the Vancouver Charter to make that happen, has refused to change municipal campaign-finance rules, saying that groups should be allowed to donate money to support their political views in a democracy.
Vision Vancouver Councillor Andrea Reimer, who has consistently pushed for campaign-finance reform, said she's encouraged by the recommendations in the report.
"What we need to put an end to the wild west here is by bringing forward clear, enforceable laws," she said.
She said the idea of having councillors recuse themselves from decisions about donors is "murky" and one that would be difficult to monitor. It would be much more straightforward to have limits on individuals and bans on unions and corporations, she said.
Ms. Reimer also supports having a citywide discussion about proportional representation, something she brought up the last time Vancouver had a referendum on changing its electoral system in 2004.
Green Party Councillor Adriane Carr was enthusiastic about many of the recommendations in the task-force report, especially those on proportional representation and campaign-finance reform.
Both Ms. Carr and Ms. Reimer also liked the idea of opening up voting to permanent residents – immigrants who have yet achieved full citizenship.
NPA Councillor George Affleck said the report is "pretty sweeping" and raises lots of questions, including how to deal with some of its unwieldy suggestions.
Patrick Smith, a professor at Simon Fraser University who specializes in municipal politics, said many of the recommendations are on issues that city council has lobbied the province about before – like campaign-finance reform – and been turned down.
As well, he said, the province's chief electoral officer has already done a study of online voting – something the task force recommends piloting – and concluded that it's not workable.
Prof. Smith also said the idea of getting councillors to withdraw from voting on issues involving donors would be problematic.
"The practicalities would be difficult."
Frances Bula