Will referendum on transit funding sink like a Stone?
Transport priorities: Cabinet minister at odds with premier over various vote details
Across Metro Vancouver, there is widespread disagreement about priorities for expanding transit services.
Surrey wants light rail. Vancouver has pitched for a new transit line to the University of B. C. Other municipalities cite the need for more buses. Nobody can agree on the means to fund any of those options.
The lack of consensus was one reason why the B. C. Liberal election platform promised that any new sources of revenue to fund regional transit priorities would be subject to a referendum.
But as 2013 ended, the Liberals’ own lack of consensus on how best to frame such a referendum was embarrassingly on display.
The cabinet member in charge of setting up the referendum, Transportation Minister Todd Stone, sounded increasingly sure of himself on the recipe for success. “I’ve done a ton of reading on this,” Stone assured me during a mid- November interview on Voice of B. C. on Shaw TV, citing research on some five dozen referendums of one kind or another across North America in the past two years. “They were questions that were asking the voters to approve new spending measures to expand transit. Seventy- three per cent of the time, these referendums were successful. Then that begs the question: what are the common denominators with all of those referendums?”
OK minister, what were they?
“People need to understand what they’re voting for” he replied. “It cannot be a convoluted question with a whole bunch of boxes to tick off and so forth. The successful referendums, almost to a referendum, tend to be yes/ no — one single question at the bottom.”
The other necessary ingredient is a well- organized campaign to ensure a favourable outcome.
“Successful referendums were referendums that in many respects were run like political campaigns,” Stone explained. “There was doortodoor canvassing; there was ‘ get
At this point, it’s not even clear that ( Transportation Minister Todd Stone) has the support of his own premier in his drive for a successful referendum.
out the vote.’ There were all the traditional aspects of a campaign that you would expect to see in a provincial or federal or municipal election.”
Nor did Stone intend to sit on the sidelines: “The premier did not make this commitment to just run through a process — maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t, whatever, and we’ll move on. We are committed to success. I, as the minister, am committed to success on this referendum.”
So, to recap the Todd Stone version of winning conditions for a successful referendum: A simple yes/ no question. A full- blown political campaign. And the Liberals, in the person of the transportation minister, pitching for a win.
Enter Christy Clark. “A simple ‘ yes’ or ‘ no’ doesn’t do justice to the questions that are there,” the premier told Justine Hunter of the Globe and Mail in December. “We really want to ask people: ‘ How much transit do you want and how do you want to pay for it? How much change do you want or do you want no change to the system at all’ ... it needs to be a multiplechoice question.”
She reiterated the theme in a year- end interview with Tom Fletcher of Black Press. “It’s not going to be a yes or no option. There will be a number of options, so it will mean that people will need to do a little bit of homework, thinking about what they’d like to pay for and how they’d like to pay for it, or whether or not they’d like to just keep the status quo.”
Clark also rejected the notion that her government should become a major player in the fight to secure approval for the referendum. “People will need to do their homework to make sure they get the answer that is right for them, but I’m not going to try to decide for people what their answer should be.”
Had Clark stumbled across evidence that eluded the well- read Stone in his research on successful referendums? Or was she keeping her distance from a campaign that might well end in failure?
Either way, she put the minister in the awkward position of having to sidestep the boss’s comments by saying that the specifics of the ballot question were still under discussion with Metro Vancouver government leaders: “It is imperative to get it right, to win this referendum.”
He and the premier were largely in agreement on the question of timing. Clark reiterated the position taken in the election platform that any referendum would be held at the same time as the municipal elections in November 2014.
Stone told me: “We want to maximize voter participation; we want to minimize the cost of the referendum; and we want to set the referendum up for the maximum chance of success ... timing in and around the existing municipal elections next November would make the most sense.”
Not to local government leaders who’d rather not have such a contentious issue on the ballot when they are running for re- election themselves. Those and other reservations will make it hard for Stone to achieve another of his winning conditions — namely, a broad coalition of support.
“We’re going to need all the businesses to support it, the students, local governments, other community organizations to get behind this. It’s going to need to be supported.”
At this point, it’s not even clear that he has the support of his own premier in his drive for a successful referendum. But if the campaign falls short, at least he’ll know where to start putting the blame.