After eight years of opening closed doors and making private records public, I?m taking a break.
The economics of running my donor-driven online investigative news service Public Eye didn?t work, and, unfortunately, that means I?m putting this column on hiatus as well.
I do so hoping that for the past two years, I?ve been able to tell you about things that ?somebody somewhere wants to suppress? – famed British tabloid publisher Alfred Haimsworth?s useful definition of news.
After all, in his words, ?all the rest is advertising? – something I tell the journalism students I teach at the University of Victoria every year.
But I also am suspending my day-to-day reporting on provincial politics with some profound concerns about its state.
In the eight years I?ve been covering the legislature, it?s become apparent to me how little of our democracy actually takes place within the people?s house.
Instead, New Democrat and Liberal legislators decide what collective positions they?re going to take during private caucus meetings.
They then articulate those positions in the legislature, with MLAs having little ability to publicly express the concerns of their constituents or even their own conscience thanks to our rigid tradition of caucus discipline.
That means, with its majority in the legislature, the government can do whatever it wants and the opposition can do nothing it wants.
As a result, many British Columbians may feel their concerns aren?t being listened to because they?re not being publicly acted on.
We had an opportunity to shake up this tradition during the 2005 and 2009 referendums on electoral reform.
Unfortunately, thanks to an advertising campaign that essentially told us we were too stupid to understand that new system, we voted against change.
But the question of whether we have the correct balance between stability and freedom within our political system remains.
The balance we?ve got lets our government get things done.
But it gets things done, in part, because we?ve given it the power to steamroll over almost any opposition.
Perhaps this is what we want in this country. Perhaps this balance is in all of our interests. But perhaps it?s not.
Perhaps it?s one of the reasons why the voter participate rate hit 51% in British Columbia during the election.
Perhaps it?s why the students I teach feel they have a better chance of making a difference outside our political system than within it.
And perhaps it?s why I?ve felt I?ve been able to make more of a difference over the past eight years as an unelected journalist than many elected politicians.
Which is why I think it?s time we have a discussion about all of these issues.
The list of who I have to thank for this column and its online counterpart would take up at least two of these columns – and many of those on that list wouldn?t thank me for publicly acknowledging them.
But I would like to specifically thank the editors at Glacier Media Inc. for welcoming my commentary and reporting in their publications.
It is an honour and privilege for anyone to be able to share their writings with the public, and Glacier Media gave me that opportunity. ?
