How about we tell drop-in politicians to stay home?

Aug 11, 2018 | 6:06 AM

AS LONG AS WE’RE TALKING about electoral reform, how about we do something about drop-in politicians?

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has announced he’ll run in a by-election in the Burnaby South riding. Singh lives in Toronto.

That riding is being vacated by NDP MP Kennedy Stewart. He lives in downtown Vancouver, and he wants to be a mayor, But instead of running for mayor of Burnaby, he plans to run for mayor of Vancouver. At least he’s going home. (He used to be the MP for Vancouver Centre but when he lost his seat there, he moved next door to Burnaby, politically that is.)

Whatever happened to living in the place you represent?

It’s fair to ask what Mr. Singh knows about Burnaby and how he thinks he can possibly represent the interests of Burnabyites. Or Burnabyers. I live several thousand kilometres closer to Burnaby than Singh does but the only thing I know about it is that it has a freeway running through it to Vancouver, and I’ll bet that’s more than he knows.

If he wins the by-election, he says he’ll move to Burnaby. Talk about too little, too late.

It’s common practice for politicians, especially party leaders, to treat ridings as a matter of convenience for getting their names on a ballot. Singh isn’t the first NDP leader to seek a place in Burnaby to hang a constituency-office shingle.

Tommy Douglas sought refuge there after losing his Commons seat in Regina in 1962. He was elected and re-elected in Burnaby-Coquitlam several times until he lost, then moved over to Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands. His frequent flyer points must have been impressive.

When Christy Clark lost her seat to David Eby in Vancouver-Point Grey a couple of elections ago, she shouldered aside the winner in Kelowna West, winery owner Ben Stewart, and won a by-election there.

It all worked out for Stewart, though — he’s back in office after Clark gave up on politics and on West Kelowna.

Even Sir John A. Macdonald was a carpetbag Parliamentarian in B.C. In 1878, after losing in his home town of Kingston, he parachuted into Victoria — even though he’d never been there — and won. He apparently never spent any time there after winning, either, but Victoria City council got the last word Thursday night by voting to remove his statue from in front of City Hall. More on that another time.

Sometimes, candidates go somewhere else to run not because they’ve lost at home, but just because they want to, or they think their chances are better, or because an opportunity pops up.

In 2000, the federal Liberals brought Kam High grad Jon Moser home from Ottawa to run against Nelson Riis. He polled fairly well but finished third as Betty Hinton won handily.

During the 2017 provincial election, I pointed out that not a single candidate in the Kamloops-North Thompson riding lived there. Not one.

In fact, that riding has frequently proven attractive for non-resident candidates, especially BC Liberals. Peter Milobar and Terry Lake are but two examples of South Shore residents who have represented the North side.

Watch as candidates declare themselves for the Kamloops civic election. It’s quite likely at least a couple of them will be non-Kamloops residents, as is often the case. Somebody from Logan Lake or from a rural area outside City boundaries will decide to run in town.

School board elections aren’t immune from it, either.

As I said in 2017, voters aren’t allowed to riding-shop. Kamloops voters can’t go down to Kelowna and vote for politicians there. That would be silly. Yet politicians are allowed to run wherever they please.

The rationale, of course, is that in some ridings with a lot of territory but comparatively little population, it’s necessary to let outsiders run to ensure representation.

But it’s contrary in principle to how we think of our democratic system. Democracies work by allowing people to choose their representatives at a local level. We aren’t a republic, we’re a country of communities.

There are some limits. One of the reasons ward systems don’t work well in smaller cities is because some wards are so small and so devoid of appropriate candidates that they fall apart.

But we think of “our representative” as someone coming from among us. Somebody who is committed enough to the place he or she wants to represent to have put down roots there. It should be home to them.

In a sense, it’s timing. Living somewhere should come first, then politics. The person who represents a constituency should want to speak on behalf of that constituency and all its idiosyncrasies and warts, not just treat it as a ticket to Victoria or Ottawa.

I haven’t heard of this issue coming up in the context of electoral reform so I gather it’s not high on the priority list of any reformers or incumbents. But somebody, either a brave candidate or voters’ group, should take up the torch and challenge those who think it’s OK to use ridings and communities for political convenience.