How a B.C. bill becomes law — and where influence enters

The civics-class version has four steps: introduction, debate, committee, royal assent. The working version has seven, and the three the civics class omits — the drafting instructions, the regulation-writing, and the implementation guidance — are where most of the influence enters, because they are the stages with no gallery.

By the time a bill is introduced, its architecture is settled; debate amends at the margins. The consequential lobbying happened months earlier, on the drafting instructions, in meetings the lobbyist registry records only as topics. And the consequential discretion comes months later, in regulations that fill in every number the bill left as a blank — thresholds, fees, timelines, exemptions — signed by cabinet without a vote.

This is not a scandal; it is a design, and it has real virtues. But a public that watches only the debate stage is watching the theatre after the casting is done, and wondering why its attendance changes so little.

The fix is attention, structurally applied: publish drafting consultations, open regulation-making to comment periods with teeth, and — the press's own assignment, which this paper accepts — cover the registry and the order-in-council list with the diligence currently reserved for question period. The stages nobody watches would improve remarkably quickly if somebody watched.