B.C. has tried and failed to change its voting system. Could another referendum be on?

British Columbia·CBC ExplainsRecommendations from an all-party B.C. committee on democratic reform has reignited a longstanding conversation in the province about the possibility of proportional representation.A decades-long debate has been reignited by recommendations from an all-party committeeEmily Fagan · CBC News · Posted: Nov 28, 2025 7:14 PM EST | Last Updated: 7 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.An all-party committee has recommended creating a people’s assembly to look into the possibility of changing B.C.’s electoral system. While the recommendation isn’t binding, it’s reignited a longstanding debate of how to make B.C.’s electoral system more fair. (Ben Nelms/CBC)After several failed attempts at changing how elections work in B.C., recommendations from an all-party special committee shows B.C. could once again be about to flirt with the possibility of proportional representation.Among the 36 recommendations from the committee is a call for B.C. to create a people’s assembly that will evaluate the current process for provincial elections — along with other alternatives — and recommend the best path forward.It’s reignited a longstanding conversation in the province about the possibility of proportional representation, a voting system where the share of votes a party gets in an election directly results in how many seats they get in the Legislature.WATCH | CBC News explained different electoral systems in the lead-up to a 2018 referendum:First Past The Post vs. Proportional ReferendumCBC’s Justin McElroy explains the differences between the two voting systems.When has B.C. looked at this before?The ongoing back-and-forth over potential changes to B.C.’s election system has been going on for decades.A previous people’s assembly in 2004 recommended replacing the current first-past-the-post system with single transferable voting, a form of proportional representation with ranked-choice voting.That was put to a referendum in 2005 – with 57.7 per cent of voters in favour, falling just shy of the 60 per cent threshold to pass. Subsequent referendums on proportional voting in 2009 and 2018 also failed to win enough support. If past attempts failed, why recommend trying again?Stewart Prest, a political science lecturer at the University of British Columbia, says many people in B.C. do not see their political views represented in the current system. As a result, he says some people are aligning themselves with more radical positions or tuning out politics entirely.Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at the University of B.C., say many people don’t see themselves represented with current voting systems. (Jon Hernandez/CBC)“There’s a sense that many people are left out of the political process, left out of the political conversation,” he said.“So I do think there is value of continuing to open the door to to change.”Sarah Wiebe, an associate professor at the University of Victoria’s school of public administration, says B.C. could run an election cycle with proportional voting to allow voters to get a feel for it before deciding.However, she said it can be tricky to convince parties in power to change the voting system — unless there is a clear signal that it could lead to more trust in democracy.What else did the report recommend?Besides the recommendation to form a people’s assembly, the committee of MLAs from all four B.C. political parties made recommendations on how to strengthen democracy, public education on elections, and voter turnout.Some of the recommendations include making Elections B.C. responsible for increasing voter turnout, looking into lowering the voting age to 16 or 17 and improving civic education for K-12 students.Other recommendations include allowing the non-partisan elections office to oversee the elections of party leaders and creating a non-partisan centre of excellence for democratic engagement.WATCH | How quickly voting systems can change:Can Canada’s voting system change?Justin Trudeau called abandoning electoral reform his biggest regret as prime minister. With a federal election on the horizon, how quickly can voting systems change? CBC News’s Ashley Fraser explains. Jennifer Blatherwick, NDP MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville and chair of the committee, said the committee heard from a strong contingent of young people interested in having a say about how elections work. “Democracy is a living beast,” she said. “It’s a constantly renewing ecosystem, and every generation who comes of age, they contribute to the totality of that ecosystem.”Are these recommendations binding?There is no requirement to make the changes recommended by the committee. However, Rob Botterell, the B.C. Green Party’s house leader, said it is something his party plans to raise in upcoming renegotiations of the Greens’ co-operation agreement with the governing B.C. NDP, among other priorities.B.C. Green Party House Leader Rob Botterell says his party will bring up the citizens’ assembly as it renegotiates a co-operation agreement with the ruling B.C. NDP. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press)Particularly, Botterell plans to push for the creation of the people’s assembly, citing a recent poll and hundreds of submissions to the committee that signaled support for proportional representation.“We should always be looking at ways to strengthen democracy,” he said.“There was strong support for doing that, and it seems like a logical step.”