The sensitive and sometimes murky world of socalled "ethnic politics" continues to engulf both major political parties.
It's been that way ever since both parties found themselves plunged into leadership races, involving mass membership sign-ups in ethnic communities.
The NDP, about to search for another leader, may be headed into another controversy involving those same mass sign-ups.
The B.C. Liberal government, meanwhile, finds itself dogged by a controversy involving ethnic communities.
The so-called "ethnic memo" controversy was big news before the election. This involved government political staff doing party work while on the taxpayer dime.
Now the RCMP is investigating the matter after NDP leader Adrian Dix went to the police with information he says may indicate some aspects of the Election Act had been violated.
Now, as someone who was part of a giant media group-think that saw the ethnic memo scandal as being a much bigger deal than the voters considered it to be, I'm reluctant to predict the RCMP investigation will lead to anything substantial.
In fact, anything short of implicating an elected official in illegal activities is unlikely to inflict much political damage on the B.C. Liberals. Still, no government likes to have the RCMP rummaging around its dirty laundry.
Nevertheless, the whole thing is yet another reminder of just how beholden our two parties are to the interests of ethnic communities.
In the last campaign, for example, the B.C. Liberals strove to have a major presence in Chinese-Canadian media through heavy advertising. That strategy appeared to pay off, as the party held at least two seats with a heavy a Chinese-Canadian population it might otherwise have lost.
But while the B.C. Liberals watch that RCMP investigation with some nervousness, the NDP is about to revisit the sensitivities wrapped around that party's relationship with ethnic communities.
The reform-minded Forward B.C. NDP faction wants to limit membership sign-ups for the leadership race to 10 people a week per person, according to the Georgia Straight newspaper.
This would prevent what happened in the last leadership races for both parties. At that time, candidates or their representatives went into places like Surrey, Delta and south Vancouver and engaged in mass signups in places like religious temples and churches.
The result is that it can be argued that a relatively small geographic region dictated the outcome of both races.
Candidates from outside the Lower Mainland were penalized by the mass signups and were effectively frozen out of the selection process.
There will be a predictable push-back from various ethnic communities to Forward B.C. NDP's proposal. They will argue, with some justification, that the members of their communities should not be limited in their potential participation in a democratic process.
It may be time for political parties to abandon the idea of giving every party member a vote in a leadership race and return to the days of convention delegates determining the winner of that race.
While membership signups can inject some interest into a leadership race, so too can a leadership convention, which carries with it several days of high drama and often an exciting outcome.
A delegated convention would also ensure no particular region or community has power disproportionate to their size when it comes to determining who the major political leaders are in this province.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC.
