CANADIAN PRESS
B.C. Premier
Gordon Campbell said today that Dalton McGuinty expressed interest in B.C.'s new
citizens' assembly, which is to come up with recommendations on political
reforms that will be put to a referendum in 2005.
"He's certainly interested in the process we've gone through, why we did
it," Campbell said after an hour-long meeting with Premier Dalton McGuinty
at the Ontario legislature.
"I outlined the fundamentals behind it."
Democratic reform was a key plank in the Liberal platform in the run-up to
Ontario's Oct. 2 election. The program calls for setting fixed four-year terms
for elections. Currently, the sitting premier can choose voting day at any point
within a five-year mandate.
B.C. already has fixed four-year terms and its Citizen's Assembly on
Electoral Reform will look at other ideas, such as a system of proportional
representation.
In all, 158 people - one man and one woman from each of British Columbia's 79
constituencies - will study electoral systems around the world in the next year
and recommend whether to change voting to the province.
B.C.'s government has committed to altering the electoral system for the 2009
provincial election if more than 60 per cent of people support change in the
referendum.
McGuinty did not talk to reporters after the meeting, his first formal
encounter with his Liberal counterpart since being sworn in Oct. 23.
Campbell also praised his Ontario counterpart for trying to keep the public
informed in light of a huge deficit that McGuinty argues has already forced him
to break various promises.
"People need to know where the government is going and why it's going
there and your premier is trying to do that here in Ontario," Campbell
said.
McGuinty has had a rough first month in office. After discovering the
province was headed toward a $5.6-billion deficit, he said he had no choice but
to break several key election promises, such as maintaining a cap on retail
electricity rates that is costing the treasury hundreds of millions of dollars a
year.
Campbell, who has come under fire for his own cost-cutting initiatives, said
his province has been through the mad cow crisis, SARS, floods, droughts and its
worst forest-fire season - all this year.
"You know the world interferes," Campbell said.
"You can't simply carry on with government as if none of that has any
impact."
