Presumably they would like to return to a more “normal” debate.  You know, one disproportionately influenced by well-heeled corporate-funded market fundamentalist think tanks and pseudo-grassroots “astroturf” industry front groups (see Donald Gutstein’s book, Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy); by tax-deductible corporate lobbying, subsidized to the tune of $100 million a year, according to Democracy Watch; by a public relations industry that now outnumbers under-resourced professional journalists by three or four to one; and by a “majority” Conservative government that was opposed by over 60% of Canadian voters but that avoids democratic accountability and steamrolls its agenda through Parliament as much as it can get away with.

One commentator suggested that Canada may be descending towards becoming an authoritarian petroleum state.  Now is the time for anybody who cares about a democratic and sustainable future to make sure that doesn’t happen.

And that is just fine with me.

I think there are some pretty good reasons to change governments but let’s leave that to other people and another time for now.  Instead let’s look at whether elections in general are a good thing.

A lot of people have been complaining about having an election.  They say it costs too much. I can’t help but think about people all over the world who are fighting and dying for just a little bit of democracy.

So if you like our federal government, go and vote for it.  If you don’t like it, vote against it.  But for Pete’s sake, don’t stay home and complain about too much democracy.

It’s not Goldilocks and the three bears.  There is no such thing as just the right amount of democracy.  You either get too little or too much.  Personally, I’ll take too much.

The fashionable electoral reform idea this year is to give corporations a real say. It’s time for individual citizens to share their electoral democracy with corporations to give meaning to those old legal rulings that said corporations are people too.

Of course, many were shocked at the Jan. 21st decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which said corporate entities have full First Amendment free speech rights, thereby trashing decades of U.S. legislation to limit election advertising spending by corporation and unions. There are now no limits on the amounts corporations can spend on political advertising in the U.S.

But did you know Gordon Campbell and the B.C. government are looking at the option of one-upping the Supremes  by giving corporations the right to vote?

It’s true.

Last October, the Premier announced the creation of a joint task force with the Union of B.C. Municipalities to review the rules for local government elections. The terms of reference for the task force direct them to examine giving corporations the right to vote in B.C. municipal elections. The committee is to report out in May and changes to legislation are expected not long after.

It seems corporations in B.C. feel they have inadequate influence on government decision-making, particularly about taxes. All that tax cutting and tax shifting of the last twenty years is apparently not enough.

Industrial ratepayers  in forest communities and commercial ratepayers in Vancouver have recently been pushing hard for homeowners to pay a greater percentage of municipal taxes. Starting in July, forest companies operating in six B.C. communities simply refused to pay their full tax bills and arbitrarily sent in cheques for only a quarter of what they had been legally assessed. The B.C. Supreme Court has ordered Catalyst Paper to pay in full, but the company is appealing and communities with Catalyst mills are feeling the crunch. Port Alberni is now planning to increase taxes for homeowners by 23.6%, while also reducing and contracting out services.

Corporations once had the right to vote in B.C. local elections, but that was eliminated by the Barrett government in 1973, restored by the Bennett government in 1976 and eliminated altogether again by the Harcourt government in 1993.

Today, there is no corporate voting in any other province and indeed – according to the task force discussion paper – the only place in the world which has it now is “The City”, that small portion of greater London which is home to much of the British financial sector.

The discussion paper also raises the amazing prospect that if B.C. does give corporations the right to vote, non-discrimination clauses in trade agreements like NAFTA and TILMA may make it impossible to restrict that right to B.C. corporations only. There’s every chance the trade agreements will force us to open up voting to foreign corporations doing business in B.C., as well.

Old fashioned ideas like “one human being, one vote” may soon be behind us. If this goes ahead, we can look forward to corporations finally having effective input and full equality with human beings.

It’s time for a refresher on all this. I think I’ll take another look at Joel Bakan’s outstanding video “The Corporation“.

You see, as an economist and public interest researcher at the CCPA, I occasionally get invitations from talk radio to discuss or debate the economic and social policy questions of the day. And since our minimum wages in BC have been frozen for eight full years now, the debate around whether we should increase the minimum wage comes up every so often. Usually, it’s around some auspicious date, such as the day that we took the rock-bottom place in Canada (that was September 1st, 2009) or the anniversary of our embarrassingly low $8 minimum wage (November 1st).

But I just can’t get airtime to discuss the minimum wage on talk radio. Typically, I get bumped off the list in favour of another guest, usually Jim Sinclair from the BC Fed. Ok, I get it: I’m a policy wonk somewhat removed from the proverbial real world while he’s right in there representing the workers, and listeners are more interested to hear from the people directly involved, not just from analysts. Fair enough.

This time around, however, something different happened. My Monday morning TALK 1410 live radio debate on the minimum wage was canceled, period. The reality is that, as of today, Vancouver has one fewer talk radio stations, as TALK 1410 rebranded itself as an all-sports station and became TEAM 1410.

The global recession has not been kind to traditional media. Sadly, this has impacts that go beyond direct job losses and reduced consumer spending to the much more important issues of media democracy as more and more voices are excluded from the mainstream media.

So this coming Monday at 7am, you won’t hear me discuss what we should do about our low minimum wages. But you can stay tuned for extensive coverage of the latest most-crucial-must-win game.

As if you needed one more reason to go to Media Democracy Day at the Vancouver Public Library this Saturday.