Skip to content

Too much sense

It's truly a shame that Vicki Huntington's common sense campaign hasn't gained any traction in Victoria.

It's truly a shame that Vicki Huntington's common sense campaign hasn't gained any traction in Victoria.

Over the past few weeks the second-term independent MLA from Delta South has put forward a number of measures that would, by most people's accounts, improve the way government operates.

Not bound by the constraints of party discipline, Huntington is free to bring forth any proposal she sees fit and these ones have no agenda other than to make government more efficient and accountable.

With absolutely no disrespect intended, they are pretty straightforward initiatives, ones that are often in place in other jurisdictions, which makes the underwhelming reception our MLA has received all the more curious.

She introduced, yet again, a bill that would ban corporate and union donations from provincial and municipal election campaigns and also reintroduced a bill that would move the province's fixed election date to the fall to allow time to scrutinize that year's budget. Just last week she called on the government to put an end to the use of public money for ads that contain political party messaging.

They're all non-partisan, common sense suggestions, so naturally they've been ignored.

That's too bad because Huntington's efforts would help combat the distrust and cynicism the average person has for politics these days.

One of the big knocks on the way government operates is that it's beholden to certain interests and often ignores the little guy when making decisions. Doing away with corporate and union donations would go a long way to leveling that playing field, ensuring politicians don't just view the public's voice as some sort of annoyance.

Eliminating the use of public money on partisan advertising seems like another no-brainer. There's a lot of junk on TV these days but there's little out there that's as irritating as the government using our own money to tell us what a great job it's doing.

I think the average person, regardless of political stripe, would see the value in Huntington's proposals, yet her colleagues in Victoria are in no hurry to take action on them. That's a shame. It's also an indictment of our current political system. ]