New TransLink Selection Process Gives Democracy the Finger

If things go according to plan, the BC Liberals and Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon will have achieved a major legislative coup by the time this story is printed. With hardly a squeak from the province’s corporate media, they will have passed a law that strips TransLink of what little democracy and accountability it has. Bill 43, “Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Act Ammendments,” will replace the democratically elected Board that currently makes regional transportation decisions, with a board of private sector appointees. Transparency will be the first casualty. Decisions now made in public—route plans, the number of buses on a route, stop locations—will move behind closed doors. Under the new TransLink, the public will not know what arguments and information influenced board decisions. Nor will the public know who supported or opposed a motion. Worse, members of the new board will not be held accountable through a democratic process. The current TransLink Board is made up of regional mayors and councilors who are elected, not directly to the Board, but who are, none the less, elected officials. This will not be the case under the new TransLink. Instead, board members will be from the private sector—corporate executives and the like—people who do not need to listen to the public. Perhaps the most drastic change is who will select the new board. Not happy to let the public choose board members, Kevin Falcon will hand board selection to corporate lobby groups. Unbelievably, the Vancouver Board of Trade, the Greater Vancouver Gateway Council (a lobby group of rail and transportation companies), and the Institute of Chartered Accountants (most of whom have close ties to the BC Liberals), will be calling the shots. They will control the new “screening panel.” The locus of this corporate power grab, the “screening panel” will have five members. In addition to the three corporate lobby group appointees, one member will be appointed by the mayors and another by the province. Yet with government-appointed members in the minority, and with the mandate to set whatever procedures it likes, the corporate majority will effectively control this panel. It is not impossible that the three corporate lobby groups will ram through whatever list of board candidates it likes. Kevin Falcon has attempted to conceal this anti-democratic, corporatist plan by creating a “council of mayors.” Consisting of the region’s mayors, the council is supposed to maintain democracy by approving the broad transportation plans concocted by the corporate board as well as screening the panel’s list of board candidates. Yet, without any influence over what these plans actually say, or who the board candidates actually are, their role will limited to that of a rubber-stamp. Despite the grave consequences for democracy and the further blurring of lines between the corporate and political realms, the province’s media has tacitly supported it. Earlier this year, Vaughn Palmer, the Vancouver Sun’s legislative reporter, called this governance takeover a “good idea” on his Shaw Cable show. As usual, BCTV’s legislative reporter, Keith Baldry, has swallowed Falcon’s arguments hook, line, and sinker: a corporate board is necessary because the democratic board was too parochial, an argument which a GVRD report earlier this year dismissed as having no basis in reality. There is a place for appointed, unelected boards to control public bodies. Entities like BC Ferries and the Vancouver Airport, for instance, can work well with unelected, corporate types. But these organizations do not have to divvy up scarce resources. They provide a specific service—making sure the planes and ferries run on time. This is fundamentally not what TransLink is about. TransLink picks winners and losers. It decides who will benefit from new transit service and who won’t, all with limited local tax dollars. Such decisions demand public accountability and public control.