Sunday February 24, 2008
Micro tempest reflects macro issues
On the surface, it sounds like a tempest in a teapot – seven school trustees squabbling over how two of those trustees will be elected in this November\’s elections, assuming that the provincial government approves the board\’s proposal.
The teapot is School District 23, which covers the central Okanagan from Peachland to Lake Country.
The tempest only affects the seats of two members of the board; Moyra Baxter, currently elected by some 5,000 voters in Peachland, and Cheryl Wiebe, currently elected by about 40,000 voters in the new municipality of Westside.
Although it\’s a small-scale disagreement – and out of character for a board that has otherwise worked together in remarkable harmony – it affects our understanding of proportional representation.
Note – that\’s two words: “proportional” and “representation.” After talking with all seven trustees, the provincial ministry of education, and some local politicians, I\’m starting to realize the two concepts are not necessarily identical.
They may even be contradictory.
Clearing the background
Once upon a time, Peachland and Westside (then an unincorporated area) had roughly comparable populations. But today, Baxter is elected by one-eighth as many voters as Wiebe. Lake Country\’s Anna Hunt-Binkley woos about 10,000 voters while four Kelowna Trustees compete for about 110,000.
That\’s hardly proportional.
So one goal was to restore more proportionality, by having Peachland and Westside elect two members at large.
This tempest has not about workloads. Without exception, the other trustees agreed that Baxter is probably the hardest working member of the board, even though she\’s elected by the smallest constituency.
Nor is it about responsibility. The trustees share responsibility for 41 schools, largely ignoring electoral boundaries. Baxter already works with several schools in Westside. Anna Hunt-Binkley\’s official constituency contains four schools. But she also covers two rural areas, whose children attend schools in Kelowna. The four Kelowna trustees share 21 schools.
To resolve this inequity, the trustees chose a classically Canadian solution – they appointed a commission to study it. The commission held meetings, which very few attended (one meeting drew only two persons).
Predictably, the commission\’s outcome satisfied no one. Board members found inconsistencies in the commission\’s mandate, conclusions, process and procedures…
Does this sound familiar? A lot like Ottawa, perhaps?
Wider implications
Trustees then floated their own proposals. Expand the Board to nine members. Maintain the status quo. Eliminate electoral boundaries. Elect all members at large…
The dissension on the board reflects those two polarities: proportion and representation.
Peachland may protest to the ministry of education. Without their own representative, they fear, their needs might be ignored.
The at-large advocates similarly fear that representing specific districts can lead to narrow parochialism. “We\’re trustees for the whole district,” insisted Wayne Horning, “not for one area.”
But if everyone represents everybody, will anybody represent the nobodies?
That\’s where the teapot spills onto a larger table.
For example, Lake Country elects six municipal councillors – two at large, four representing the four communities that amalgamated. One of those communities, Winfield, has more voters than all three smaller ones combined.
Without a ward representative, who would speak up for the mere 500 or so residents in the village of Okanagan Centre?
At a national level
Canada\’s ten provinces and three territories, America\’s 50 states, the world\’s 200 or so independent nations – all are macro examples of the school board\’s microcosm. Why have states, why have provinces, why have nations – except to ensure that local agendas do not get overlooked?
Why not – as Hunt-Binkley suggested facetiously – elect all provincial MLAs at large by the 75 per cent of the province\’s population who live in the lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island?
Obvious answer – because most of them don\’t know, and don\’t care, what\’s going on beyond their own doorsteps.
At present, only 16 of B.C.\’s 60 school districts elect all trustees at large. All the rest have area representatives.
This seemingly tiny tempest comes to a national focus in Canada\’s Senate.
The Senate\’s seats were originally distributed to give each region of Canada equal weight. So the three original Maritime provinces, Quebec, Ontario, and the west each have 24 seats – regardless of populations.
This results in significant anomalies.
Tiny Prince Edward Island gets four Senate seats; British Columbia, with 30 times more people, has six.
That\’s even further out of proportion than Peachland and Westside.
Balancing conflicting values To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing.
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It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
In a proportional Senate, metropolitan Toronto would have 13 senators to argue its case. But Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Prince Edward Island together would have to depend on a single senator.
Would a Bay Street senator from Toronto, with business ties mainly to New York and Dallas, who has never been north of his cottage in Muskoka, passionately promote the unique concerns of Iqaluit or Pangnirtung?
Experience suggests not.
At one time, my wife worked for the Canadian branch of a U.S. catalog giant. Her office regularly reminded the U.S. headquarters that Canadian order forms required six-digit postal codes, not five-digit zip codes.
Without success. Canada simply didn\’t register on American corporate radar.
Much of Quebec\’s push for independence came from their conviction that Anglophone legislators did not, could not, and would not support Quebec\’s French language concerns.
You cannot represent someone else in isolation from them. Accountability means facing your constituents at the coffee shop, the ball game, the bank lineup…
I say that without criticizing the views of any of the seven trustees. I was impressed with their openness, their commitment to students of School District 23.
If, for some reason, a Kelowna-based trustee assumed responsibility for Lake Country\’s three elementary schools and one secondary school, I\’m sure that person would do his or her best to represent those schools\’ concerns to the larger district.
But that\’s still a relatively local connection. I doubt if a trustee from Victoria or Ottawa would feel similar commitment.
Neither proportion nor representation is an absolute value. Each needs to be balanced against the other.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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