Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 2: The flip side: Why vote ‘No’ to Proportional Representation? — with Bill Tieleman
Speakers: Am Johal, Bill Tieleman
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Am Johal 0:07
This week on Below the Radar, we’ll be speaking with Bill Tieleman, who’s campaigning on the ‘no’ side for the proportional representation referendum in British Columbia. I’m Am Johal, and this podcast is produced by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.
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Am Johal 0:32
Thank you for joining us this week on Below the Radar. We’re here with Bill Tieleman who’s campaigning on the ‘no’ side on the proportional representation referendum in BC. He’s been previously a communications director in the BC Premier’s office and he’s with West Star Communications. Welcome, Bill.
Bill Tieleman 0:48
Thanks for having me.
Am Johal 0:50
So last week we spoke with Maria Dobrinskaya from the Broadbent Institute and she outlined sort of the reasons why people should vote ‘yes’. I’m wondering if you could talk about the main reasons you think people should vote ‘no’ in the upcoming referendum.
Bill Tieleman 1:04
Sure, I’d be happy to and I should say that I haven’t changed my position. I’m a proud New Democrat, I worked for Glen Clark in his premier’s as communications director for a while. But I’ve taken the same position for over 15 years. I led opposition to the single transferable vote, proportional representation system in 2005 and in 2009, and I honestly thought that was the end of it because it was a 61% vote to keep first-past-the-post and not go to STV and I thought that was the end of it. But here we are again, so third time in 13 years - it’s kind of amusing to some people. So for us, first-past-the-post is simple, it’s stable, it’s successful. And we’ve had first-past-the-post for 145 of our 147 years as a province, minus a small two-year experiment with ranked ballot, and it does work very well for us in a number of ways and we can measure that.
Bill Tieleman 1:52
By comparison, proportional representation is complicated and confusing, and no matter what people say on the other side, I ask them “go on the street, talk to people, explain proportional as best you can or say ‘what do you think about this?’ or show them the ballot in the booklet from Elections BC”, and the thing that keeps coming back is complicated, confusing, I don’t understand it. And so I think that that’s one of the biggest issues.
Bill Tieleman 2:13
We also know from the government’s consultation, which was woefully inadequate, but they did two things: they did a public website, asking people what were the most important attributes of an electoral system, and they also did polling. And in both of those cases, the first and foremost was simple and easy to understand, and so I think they missed the boat on that one completely by comparison to first-past-the-post. So we have lots of problems with proportional, we see that it creates political instability, perpetual minority governments, it allows extremists to win election to legislatures all around, particularly in Europe with as little as 5% or even less in some countries in Europe, but certainly with 5% under the three models proposed, and we have all sorts of other issues with the actual referendum itself.
Bill Tieleman 2:57
There are 29 outstanding questions to be resolved after the referendum, after voters have voted on yes or no and potentially picked one of the three proportional representation systems. For examples, we do not know - no one listening to this, no one in British Columbia voting - knows what their riding boundaries would be before they vote. They don’t know how many MLAs would be in that riding - undefined. Could be one, could be two, could be as many as seven under the rural-urban proportional system. So these are fundamental questions when you’re changing your democratic institutions. They’re not lightly.. To just be said “oh well we can deal with that later, not to worry about it.” And I particularly, even though I’m a New Democrat, I particularly worry about any party in power or parties in power making decisions of that fundamental nature that can be in their best interest on their own with a majority and a legislative committee with majority NDP-Greens will make those decisions afterwards. So in a nutshell there is an absolute raft of problems with proportional representation.
Bill Tieleman 3:53
By comparison, first-past-the-post, we know how it works, we know the system, we know our boundaries, we know they can change in a minor way by an independent commission, but all those things are known to us now. So I think, just on the sheer lack of information alone, people who have any question about this should vote ‘no’ to make sure they don’t get something that’s a real political Pandora’s box.
Am Johal 4:12
Yeah, in countries like New Zealand and other countries as well that have gone to proportional representation, you don’t see a groundswell of support to go back to a first-past-the-post system, and so I’m wondering if you can speak to that a little bit.
Bill Tieleman 4:30
Certainly, well New Zealand is an excellent example because first of all, it’s one of the only countries in recent years to switch. But secondly, and if we look around the world, we saw in Great Britain, they had an alternative election system proposed which they turned down. Ontario, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia have all turned down proportional representation models. But when we look at New Zealand, they took multiple years to get to the process of having a referendum and changing their system. They had public hearings, a lot of education went on, people had a lot of ability to look at the different models, they made their decision and then after a few elections, they switched in 1996. After a few elections they went back and asked people. And it was a split vote, it wasn’t like 90% said it was great. But that’s the appropriate way to approach the situation. By comparison, we’ve had almost zero consultation, not a single public hearing before the legislation was introduced, not a single public hearing after the legislation was introduced, and before the vote took place.
Am Johal 5:23
But I would say John Horgan and Andrew Weaver would probably argue that they ran on this on their election platforms so they have a mandate to carry it out.
Bill Tieleman 5:32
Well the Premier ran on holding a referendum, and that was as much as was said. But when we look at just the BC example, the Citizens’ Assembly was formed under the BC Liberals. They held and they picked individuals from every riding, ordinary citizens, they came up with a recommendation, and then we had the riding maps done by the 2009 referendum for sure - all of those things were done. So what we’re doing in British Columbia this time is not giving voters information they need, not having an educational process, not allowing public input to identify problems that could exist, and it’s being pushed through in a rush, and I think that’s a mistake. As you know, we have no threshold for participation. So if 10% of the population votes, that’s enough. I’m a strata council president, and according to the BC Strata Act, which is a BC law, when my furnace broke down and I needed $20,000 repair it, as a strata council president I had to call a special general meeting, get a quorum of the members and have a 75% vote in favour in order to spend $20,000 on something we absolutely needed. But we can change our democratic system with no quorum and 50% plus one vote. I don’t think that’s right.
Am Johal 6:37
Now the ‘no’ side has been criticized in the media and from proponents of the ‘yes’ side for fear-mongering, for some over the top advertising in terms of extremist parties entering into the legislature, so I’m wondering if you can respond to that a little bit.
Bill Tieleman 6:54
Well I think that people have every reason to be afraid when we look at what’s going on in Europe. We looked in Sweden, a proportional representation country, the Sweden Democrats, a party with clear neo-Nazi links, has got 18% of the vote in the elections in September. We look at Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland, again a party that has extremist, right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, with again neo-Nazi issues, has 94 seats. But they only won three of those seats in ridings, 91 of those came from party lists, which is part of the mixed-member proportional system. We look at Austria, where the Austrian Freedom Party formed by former Nazi SS officer originally, and with ongoing problems with extremism, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, they have cabinet positions. They are in charge of defence and interior ministries now and a partner of a coalition government. We can look at other countries - Denmark, Hungary, and others. So my father lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland during the Second World War and he joined the Dutch resistance and fought to free Holland from Nazi occupation, and when I see what is happening in Europe right now, it makes me very afraid of what is going on, and I think that people would be wrong to not think there’s a reason to ring an alarm bell and say “hey, maybe not Nazis or literally neo-Nazis, but certainly extremists. I think the idea of an anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-Indigenous, anti-SOGI, LGBTQ party getting 5% of the vote in BC is entirely possible unfortunately.
Am Johal 8:22
Yeah, there are some people who would argue that some of those things exist on the fringes of our existing, mainstream parties to some degree, and I do have some criticism for both the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ side on the question of the threshold. It was sort of set at 5% because the political scientists do it and other countries have it, but there wasn’t really consultation on that. I would have preferred a higher threshold to deal with. I think your critique around extreme voices in the legislature that can kind of mobilize and carve out space, but on the other hand it’s important to have those spaces also inside the legislature as well. The fear-mongering piece, I think that part has landed well with some people in terms of the kind of critique that you have, but at the same time, setting a threshold at 5% might be too low.
Bill Tieleman 9:21
Well, I think that the threshold issue is an interesting one because in the Netherlands where my father is from it’s under 1%, and so it’s very simple. And the second largest party is the Freedom Party, whose last platform was ‘ban the Quran, close the mosques, throw the Islamic refugees and immigrants out of the country, and by the way, Moroccans are all scum.’ That guy has the second largest number of seats in the Dutch legislature and that scares me a lot. And when I see other countries, you know it’s 3, 4, 5% thresholds. 5% is not a huge number when you look at the entire province. We’ve got the same population as New Zealand, and we look at what happened in New Zealand, which was also mixed-member proportional, which is one of the three options, a party that got 7% of the vote, the New Zealand First party, very strong anti-immigrant party led by a guy, Winston Peters, who’s been described as the ‘Donald Trump of New Zealand’ which is not complimentary, he became the deputy prime minister. He got 7% of the vote, they didn’t win a single riding, a single constituency in the entire country, they haven’t won a single riding in a constituency since 1996, but they get 9 seats, and those 9 seats was a balance of power. So a party with 9 seats and 7% of the vote decides who the prime minister is, appoints themselves deputy prime minister, decides changes in policy for the Labour Party which became the government party, and that is the epitome of the tail wagging the dog.
Am Johal 10:48
In terms of my own friend networks, when I talk to them about this referendum, I would say people who are 50 years old and older tend to be against changing the system. They feel like it’s a stable system and many make the arguments that you do. But people under the age of 50 seem like they want to have a change to the system because they feel very disassociated from the politics of the day and they feel like it’s a way of getting more voices into the legislature that reflect their own political views. I wonder if you can speak to that.
Bill Tieleman 11:19
Sure. Well, my glib comment would be I hope you have lots of old friends and not too many young ones! But more seriously, when we hear about proportional representation, we hear a lot of snake oil-type statements about ‘well, it’s going to solve this, it’s going to solve that, ‘diversity’, and youth will be there’ and et cetera. But in reality, electoral systems don’t change those problems. For example, turn out - if we want to improve turn out dramatically, they may be a slight increase under proportional, and there are some studies that I’ve seen, it goes up when you adopt it and then it goes back down again. But if you really want turn out, you need mandatory voting. Australia uses that - they have a 94% turn out. There is no voter suppression. Every party knows that every voter effectively is going to vote, whether they are a renter, whether they live in a rural area or an urban area, and 33 other countries use that for example. If we want more cooperation, we could do things like have the legislature decide that the budget can only be passed with a 60% or a 65% vote, which would force whoever the governing party is to reach out to the opposition to negotiate on the budget. Those kind of things could happen, but they’re not dependent at all on an electoral system, they are dependent on other rules. So I think that some of the claims that are made of ‘this will empower youth and First Nations’ and all sorts of other things aren’t really borne out by the facts, or this is not a good solution for that, it’s at best mediocre to poor and there’s much better ways to address those problems, but electoral systems aren’t it.
Am Johal 12:49
We’re at 312 Main Street right now where two of the organizations on the ‘yes’ side - the Broadbent Institute and Dogwood Initiative - are based out of here. And one of the questions that I would like to have for you is let’s say you were on the yes side. Of the three options that are available, which one do you find the most palatable?
Bill Tieleman 13:09
Well, it’s an interesting question which I’m not going to answer because our position is to boycott all three. In fact, we’re telling people “one and done, vote for first-past-the-post” and send in your ballot.
Am Johal 13:19
Let’s say you were forced to make a decision… it seems to me, one of the arguments you’re making is around the simplicity of the first-past-the-post system. And when I talk to people in places that have MMP, you still vote for your local candidate, you vote for the party…
Bill Tieleman 13:36
But that’s not even decided. Am, that’s not even decided - it could be party-only vote. That’s one of the many questions that are left unanswered. And what we’ve said to people is, how could you make a choice? How could you rank these systems when we don’t know all the details? We don’t know one MLA, two MLAs, 7 MLAs, the government has not defined the difference between rural-urban and semi-urban…
Am Johal 13:54
All three of the political party leaders have stated that they prefer open party lists…
Bill Tieleman 14:04
But John Horgan said before the election, in a meeting with the Vancouver Sun, that he would have two simple questions, first-past-the-post in this referendum, first-past-the-post and an alternative system fully fleshed out. That didn’t happen. All sorts of things are said in the heat of the moment. I say, if you wanted to make sure there was only open lists, then why wasn’t it in the legislation for MMP as an option? That would be simple enough to do. So they’re just reacting to political winds of the day. I don’t think it’s a be-all and end all question, but more to your original point, two of the three systems have never been tried anywhere in the world. That’s just absurd, and to say it’s a made in BC solution doesn’t cut it with me. Most countries in the world that use proportional representation use party list, which isn’t on the ballot. And it’s not on the ballot probably for some good reasons because it doesn’t really involve having ridings. But there’s no way that I can make a decision, a rational decision, with the knowledge that I have, with three systems, with not enough detail. So unfortunately I can’t answer your question.
Am Johal 15:03
People on the ‘yes’ side argue that those who are on the ‘no’ side benefit from the existing system - either they work as lobbyists or they’re existing politicians functioning within a framework, and so this is a kind of ‘old guard’ argument. So I’m wondering if you can respond to that.
Bill Tieleman 15:24
Well, yeah, I hear some of that. And just to be clear yet - I know you know this, Am - but for the umpteenth time, I’m not being paid to do this. This is totally volunteer for the third time in 13 years. I’m not lobbying for anyone on this. Some of my clients agree with me, some of them disagree with me very strongly, and it doesn’t help my business. But if we had proportional and if there was a multiplicity of parties - kind of a ‘pizza parliament’ situation - it would make more work for lobbyists. There would be more parties to deal with, you’d need more staff to go out there because everything would be up in the air for a vote and we’ve seen that in many different countries with proportional. We’ve seen in Italy, and my opponents don’t like it when I raise Italy, but 65 governments in 70 years under proportional representation. And so you have these changing coalitions. So I can quite clearly for the lobbying business and government relations it would a huge expansion of business because no one could deal with that. And the idea that it’s simpler under first-past-the-post, I don’t care if it’s simple or not. I’m just working for a living like everyone else. So the more work there is the better.
Bill Tieleman 16:25
As for the old guard part, I think that people who have a good look at the system and think about it don’t believe it should be changed. But, that said, there are people on both sides who want either, who’ve been around for a long time, you know, John Horgan for example, the premier, Glen Clark is on our side as is Ujjal Dosanjh, former NDP premier. So there’s no absolute line to be drawn between one group and another group. I regret that the this government has politicized this issue, because the Liberals, to their credit in 2005 and 2009 did not, and the NDP did not, either, they all stayed out of it and let voters decide as it should be. Instead, we have politicians politicizing this. We’ve got a leaders’ debate that’s happening as well, and that’s just only further politicizing the issue where it really should be up to voters and advocacy groups in my opinion.
Am Johal 17:13
It seems like each side is sort of cherry picking examples that work or don’t work for PR…
Bill Tieleman 17:20
Shocking. Shocking.
Am Johal 17:22
Yes, Germany is doing well economically, New Zealand is doing fine, and the ‘no’ side brings up these others, but would you not agree that there are some examples where you have quite stable PR governments in place that have been functioning for decades?
Bill Tieleman 17:35
Well, there’s no question that proportional representation and perpetual minority governments, that they have… it’s not like on one side is heaven and the other side is hell. Obviously these countries do. But, look at Germany for example. Yes, they have a very strong economy, but we’ve just seen Angela Merkel resign or say she will resign as chancellor because of increasing pressure from the Alternative für Deutschland and anti-immigrant sentiment and attacks on the Christian Democratic Party that she leads. We’ve seen that situation developing where they couldn’t form a government for an extended period of time as well…
Am Johal 18:16
We’ve have that internally within parties from Stockwell Day to whomever internal revolts, that’s the nature of politics, no?
Bill Tieleman 18:22
Well it’s not so much an internal revolt, I think it’s external in this case. But, by comparison, this is the first minority government that we’ve seen in 65 years, it’s very unusual circumstance here. So I think that the reality is, and I read stuff on social media from advocates for proportional saying ‘oh, we have the best countries in the world’. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of factors involved in all this stuff, and I would defy anyone to say that you couldn’t find - and you do find - lists with Canada, the UK, and America on those lists as well and it’s just different factors. I don’t think that’s the be all and end all of it, I think really, the question so be asking is, is it a good political system? Does it give me, in our view, give you local representation with an MLA in your community in a defined area which you know, where you can MLAs if you wish if they don’t do a good job, and they can change the government if necessary, which we’ve seen here in this province a number of times.
Am Johal 19:21
Now you mention that you have the support of former premiers like Glen Clark and Ujjal Dosanjh, but I was wondering if you can speak to, as we draw to a close on this campaign fairly soon, what’s been your strategy in terms of getting to the end game of this referendum? How are you doing outreach with different communities and how that’s going.
Bill Tieleman 19:45
Well, it’s been very challenging, first of all, because we had basically from Labour Day through to October 20th we had municipal election campaigns and it was very hard for us to get a word in edgewise about this referendum even though it’s extremely important and could change the way we elect our democratic representatives for decades to come. And then we had marijuana legalization on October 17th. So to start with, we had to ring the alarm bell and so we did, as you said earlier, hard-hitting TV ads and we’ll go back to some more television advertising towards the end, the last period when people can still vote. But we’ve also been quite active in both the South Asian and the Chinese-Canadian communities. We have outreach committees working there very hard within both communities to contact people and let them know that this is going on. And there’s a real challenge. As I said earlier in this interview, no public hearings, no publicly sponsored debates, I’m doing things like your show and lots of media and some organizations are doing it. But by comparison with the HST, the universities held public, open, free debates from both sides so people could think about the HST issue and they were all over the province. Nothing like that is happening this time and I think it’s a real paucity of democratic engagement.
Am Johal 21:01
Anything you’d like to add?
Bill Tieleman 21:03
No, I think that when people look at the ballot, those who haven’t voted yet, I think they should think about what is the most important values for them, and if you want something that’s simple, that’s stable, that’s been successful, where you have an accountable local representative, you can change them, this is a system which has allowed the first First Nations person elected in 1949, Frank Calder, we had the first Indo-Canadian cabinet minister Moe Sahota, the first Indo-Canadian premier in Ujjal Dosanjh, we have Filipino-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians elected for long periods of times, and we’ve had many different parties that have grown up to meet the needs of communities. So I think that no system is perfect, but it is a good system and we understand it, and the alternative is a leap into the unknown.
Am Johal 21:47
So last night we just had the US Midterm Elections. So I just thought, since we have you here, you have a quick hot take on your analysis on what happened last night.
Bill Tieleman 21:55
Well, the Democrats blew it again, that’s kind of the short version. I mean, I’m glad they took control of the House of Representatives and that will provide some balance to the Republicans and to Donald Trump. But losing seats in the Senate, and I think it’s unfortunate because those who say ‘well there must be some giant, negative reaction to the craziness of Donald Trump’, the answer is no, there isn’t. And that many Americans are quite content with that kind of a leadership from a guy who’s very erratic and very right-wing. But, when you look at the numbers in ridings, in district after district, congressional and state senate, the Republicans did quite well and so, I think that the American public is in a very split frame of mind at best. And what we Canadians, I think that if the election was in Canada, I know the results, there would be very few Republicans left. But, they’re in a very different space in time and despite all the regressive and reactionary things that Donald Trump has done, he still has strong support among the American people, unfortunately.
Am Johal 22:58
Thank you so much for joining us, Bill. As I said before, I voted on the ‘yes’ side for MMP but I haven’t put it in the mailbox yet but you did a great job of convincing me…
Bill Tieleman 23:10
There’s still time, there’s still time!
Am Johal 23:10
You won’t convince me, but you might convince some people!
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Am Johal 23:18
Thank you for listening to our conversation with Bill Tieleman on the ‘no’ side of the proportional referendum in British Columbia. And thank you to the producers of Below the Radar, Jamie-Leigh Gonzales, Melissa Roach and Maria Cecilia Saba. Hope you tune in next week for future episodes.
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