One year ago, I hopped in the car and drove up to Camrose, Alberta, leaving behind an Okanagan summer to work in the Battle-River Crowfoot by election. I did not have any political campaign experience or know if I would get hired. I went anyway.
Why?
Because I thought Damien Kurek’s decision to vacate his seat as fast as possible, after receiving one of the most decisive mandates in the country, was an insult to our democracy. I also saw it as an affront to the spirit of the Lobbying Act, since Kurek serendipitously found a position working as “not a lobbyist” at Upstream Strategy Group shortly after stepping aside for the party leader.
Our exercise against self-serving politics was unsuccessful, but it was not futile. Nearly 1 in 10 voters wrote Bonnie’s name down on their ballot, and more importantly, people across Canada realized that us nobodies can make a difference if we choose to step into the arena.
Fast forward to now.
Much of the last legislative session was spent in tumult over what has become known as Premier Eby’s “DRIPA flip flops.” His climbdown from originally proposing amendments to the legislation, to instead spending the summer behind closed doors with Indigenous political executives of the First Nations Leadership Council made headlines across the country. The drama culminated with legal experts and columnists concluding that “co-governance” with First Nations was now underway.
This characterization may have been shocking to some. Is governance authority in British Columbia really being shared with groups who are unelected by over 95% of the public?
The answer is yes. But it began long before this session’s DRIPA saga.
The evidence of co-governance has been hiding in plain sight; it is glaringly obvious if you stop reading government announcements and policy documents as meaningless word salad, and instead understand that they do have meaning and that they mean exactly what they say.
Read the full article at Sitka Media: Co-governance began a while ago — and nobody voted for it.