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Opinion: A legislative committee put off the inevitable — replacing Legislature desk with benches — and shoehorned in six more $20,000 desks
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VICTORIA — A B.C. legislature committee this week tackled the challenge of where to put another six seats in an already crowded chamber.
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The expansion, taking effect after the next provincial election, will increase the seat count in the legislature to 93 from the current 87.
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When the buildings were completed in 1898, there were only 38 seats. Successive redistributions in recent decades have been adding seats at a rate of about one a year.
The pace has forced repeated reconfigurations of the chamber.
They’ve moved the Speaker’s throne closer to the wall, eliminated a row of seats for the press gallery, reduced the size of the desks, pushed the rows closer together and built raised platforms along the sides for additional seating.
This summer, the building managers have removed all of the desks and other furniture to allow an engineering crew to determine whether the floor of the 130-year old chamber can carry the load of another expansion.
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Before putting everything back, the all-party legislative assembly management committee considered a radical makeover that would have replaced some or all of the seats with benches.
The option is one that has been discussed for years. As a matter of routine during a day’s sitting, some members are on house duty in the chamber, others are sitting in committee rooms elsewhere in the building, still others are in their offices, doing constituency work or travelling.
The entire complement of MLAs are only in the chamber during question period, four days a week for 30 minutes at a time.
Even then, most of the talking is done by cabinet ministers, fielding questions from a small number of Opposition critics. For the rest of the government and Opposition members, the main task is thumping their desks in approval for the speakers on their side at the appropriate moment.
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So it would hardly be a major inconvenience to legislature business to replace some or all of the desks with benches, as does the United Kingdom.
The go-to-the benches option was given some study earlier this year by a sub committee of the legislative management committee. But in a final report back to the main committee Thursday, the option was deemed to be unworkable owing to time constraints.
“Bench style seating was presented as both a short- and long-term option,” said the report in part.“Although many subcommittee members were interested in exploring bench seating as an option, it was determined after the meeting that bench seating would not be a recommended short-term option.”
The main concern was that there was not enough time to remake the chamber and commission custom-built benches and “alternative work surfaces” before the election set for Oct. 19, 2024, 15 months hence.
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This need not have been a rush job. The New Democrats passed legislation two years ago to allow the chamber to be expanded to 93 seats. Had they commissioned a redesign at the same time, the benches would be ready by now.
Instead, the four New Democrats, two B.C. United and one Green MLA on the committee chaired by Speaker Raj Chouhan were left to approve yet another exercise in shoe horning more seats into the existing configuration.
The report touted its recommendation as the cheapest way to implement the expansion within a “short time frame.”
But it acknowledged that the last ditch expansion will limit wheelchair accessibility to the chamber. It also means putting off the reckoning until the next electoral redistribution, due in eight to 10 years.
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The redesign will entail pushing more desks closer together to create space for four more desks along the sides of the chamber and two at the far end of from the Speaker.
The centre aisle will be reduced to a narrow corridor for most of its length.
At one time, the gap between the two sides was the traditional “two sword lengths,” respecting the days when British parliamentarians actually carried swords.
MPs in the U.K. were supposed to check their swords in the cloak room. But even if they did not, the gap between the two sides ensured that “if tempers flared, their swords would not touch and no damage would be done,” according to The Great Palace, a parliamentary history by BBC reporter Christopher Jones.
With the makeover approved this week, the gap between the two sides in the B.C. house will be reduced to an average of “six feet and four inches”, according to the schematic diagram approved by the committee.
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Given that the premier is 6-foot-7, the two sides will not even be separated by one “Eby.”
Though the management committee considers this the cheapest option for expanding the chamber, it is nevertheless budgeted at $300,000, including the cost of rewiring, reconfiguring and construction of the necessary elevated platforms.
The entire legislature building cost $900,000 back when that was real money.
The current outlays will include $120,000 to ensure that the new members in the expanded house “will have the same size and style of desks” as the current ones.
So six custom built desks at $20,000 apiece.
All that desk-thumping doesn’t come cheap.
vpalmer@postmedia.com
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