(FUTURE)
British Columbia: To Big to Govern?
Time to unwind the province in order to create something better
By Don Elzer
30.11.2010
British Columbia should have an unwinding strategy similar to the one being proposed for companies which have become to big to fail. With big companies the risk is that if they become to large, failure may have such a large ripple effect that the entire domestic or global economy may fail.
Perhaps an unwinding strategy for a government isn’t a bad idea either?
If a government can no longer deliver a just and equitable democracy to its citizens then it should have a plan to dissolve itself for the betterment of everyone. I suppose this all happens within the parliamentary system and the process by which an election is called or when a ruling minority government loses the confidence of the House, and then hands power over to the Opposition – but really I’m suggesting something very different.
Here in British Columbia our democracy is threatened because our province has become too big to govern. We as a people are falling victim to the vast geography of this place which has come to contain a growing diversity of people seeking community-determination far-away from decision makers.
Don’t get me wrong, we are being governed, but we’re not being governed fairly or democratically. The people who live in the outlying areas of this province want to make decisions for themselves – and in any healthy democratic model – so they should.
The question does emerge – should we be creating an unwinding strategy in the event that this situation becomes unmanageable sometime in the future– or is such an event upon us now?
This very question exposes the very large elephant in the room when one considers the Canadian provincial and federal political landscape, or for that matter the North American political landscape. We have come to believe that our present provincial jurisdictions represent a fair and equitable form of "regional" government, when in fact many of our provinces have within them many regions, which continue to be dominated by very centralized interests in Vancouver and Victoria.
Those centralized interests have not allowed the debate to occur which has created a political culture that has led us to believe that our provinces are without question entitled to remain - without changing - forever.
That idea would run contrary to historical fact, which has this region west of the Canadian Rockies change in governance dramatically over the past 250 years. This was once a land consisting of many First Nations and then upon European claim over the land and its resources, we became governed by the Monarchy 8000 km away in London; and then the House of Lords; and then the Colonial Minister; and then the Hudson’s Bay Company a crown corporation; and then the Colonial Governor of Vancouver Island; and then the Governor of British Columbia; and then the Canadian House of Commons; and then the Premier of British Columbia. The list is a long one and has been interconnected but with one common thread – government and self-determination is slowly coming closer to home.
We have learned that governance constantly evolves as people and places change, but for some reason starting at about 150 years ago this democratic evolution became stuck in Victoria. This region west of the Rockies is now a very different place than it was in the 1800’s when Governor James Douglas ruled with near absolute authority under the British crown. Before there was a province or a colony, this land once had within it four distinct and recognized political and economic regions – Vancouver Island, the Fraser Valley, the Columbia District and New Caledonia.
If conditions had been slightly different at the time, we may have had four provinces within an independent British protectorate called the Confederation of British Columbia; or perhaps three or four provinces west of the Rockies within the Canadian confederation.
But alas – there’s something about governance that causes the people empowered to make the decisions, to believe bigger is better. This is understandable since the primary model of governance in British North America has always been driven by the need to extract the resources from remote hinterlands to feed the economies of growing and constantly hungry industrial heartlands - so that wealth can be generated for a few.
So for the past 150 years the evolution of governance has become stuck within the realm of entitlement supported by the same feudal elements that caused the Magna Carta to be written eight hundred years ago - which marked the beginning of a struggle for common people to strive for equality and self-determination.
Today, based on knowing our past mistakes, it’s hard to imagine that we have come to accept that someone in an office in Vancouver or Victoria can be allowed to make a decision about a place a thousand kilometers away that will affect an entire community of people without ever visiting or really knowing the people or the place.
We are part of a democracy which is indeed, remote.
Our provincial constituencies and regional districts in far off hinterlands are facing an erosion of autonomy to the point where they may emerge as entities no different than the original Indian Reserves governed by the Department of Northern and Indian Affairs, a model that is considered almost shameful by social justice standards today.
Former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson said, “Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and excellent in the human spirit”.
Perhaps it is time to evolve our national purpose so that our connection to the land and our conviction towards our neighbors becomes our legacy towards all that is noble and good and excellent - and then what we make of our nation becomes a refection of that purpose.
As a people, we are most connected with the immediate place that we live, our family, our neighbors our work colleagues, the forest or field that surrounds us and all the things closest to us that help to serve our existence. These are the things that are the threads that bind us together as a community, a province and as a nation.
If those threads are severed and we become disconnected, our community fails us - as does our nation.
British Columbia has become to big to govern, it has become a characterization of desperation as it seeks to try to keep those threads connected as we attempt to manage places that we have never been – yet in our naïve misguidance we have come to believe that we will do all that is good for that place and its people – without a notion to empower them instead.
Our desperate acts to govern the entire province fairly from Victoria and Vancouver have failed on nearly all counts. Now it is time to have faith in a renewal of democracy that will see BC’s hinterlands freed so that they can achieve self-government as a new province within the Canadian confederation.
This is a conversation that requires the engagement of every British Columbian as each of us - is our brothers and sisters keeper. It is pan-political, pan-economic, pan-spiritual and pan-cultural - but it requires a certain faith which accepts that each of us cares most about our sense of place, and that liberty, self-determination and stewardship are individual responsibilities that are personal and unique within every one of us.
It is time to unwind British Columbia to create something better and to renew the idea of Canada west of the Rockies. We are a vast number of watersheds, plateaus and inlets that represent cultures that have existed here since the beginning of time. We are part of a history where people have become interconnected with the land and each other and we have an obligation to show Canada and the rest of the planet that we can define a new style of governance that can exemplify stewardship within a renewed democracy.
Don Elzer is the publisher of the Monster Guide.
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