Proportional representation a loser, Chrétien says
Former prime minister Jean Chrétien is railing against efforts to replace Canada’s electoral system with proportional representation, calling it a way for “apparatchiks” to “enter Parliament through the back door.”
“For all the professors who want to sit in Parliament but who can’t even get themselves elected dogcatcher, sure, it’s a good system,” the 84-year-old said in a French language interview with Le Devoir recently.
“Going to the street corner, shaking hands and asking for a vote. That’s democracy.”
Proportional representation loosely refers to any electoral system designed to more accurately reflect the popular vote.
Under Canada’s current “first past the post” system, MPs only need to win a plurality of votes in their riding. The frequent result is that Canadian political parties need only about 40 per cent of the vote to form a majority government. In extreme cases, MPs have been able to go to Ottawa with a mere 26 per cent of their riding’s support.
Nevertheless, Chrétien cited New Zealand as a cautionary tale, saying that the country’s 1990s shift to proportional representation remains a key regret for his “friend” Jim Bolger, the country’s then prime minister.
“‘It’s the worst mistake I ever made,’ he told me, because it brought instability to New Zealand,” Chrétien said.
Since 1996, New Zealand has decided its elections using a system of “mixed member proportional representation” in which voters cast one ballot for their local representative, and another for their preferred political party.
The New Zealand parliament is thus made up of local MPs as well as “list” MPs chosen by political parties in proportion to their vote share.
The system is credited with increasing the number of women and Maori representatives, but it’s also meant that every election since 1996 has resulted in a hung parliament, requiring a coalition to form government.
There are few Canadians who have benefited more from first past the post than Chrétien.
His three consecutive majority governments were secured largely because Canadian conservatives at the time were split between competing parties.
In 1997, for instance, Chrétien won his second majority with only 38.46 per cent of the popular vote. The combined vote shares of the right-leaning Reform and Progressive Conservative parties, meanwhile, was 38.18 per cent.
Nevertheless, Chrétien credited first past the post with forcing him to oversee a caucus filled with dissenting voices.
A noted side-effect of first past the post is that it favours broad, big-tent parties, as opposed to the regional, single-issue and fringe parties more present in legislatures elected via proportional representation.
“I had people from the extreme right in my party and people from the extreme left, and that gave me problems,” he said, adding that the Liberal caucus was packed with competing views on gun control, abortion and even the death penalty.
Chrétien specifically mentioned Charles Caccia, a Toronto MP who he said was “further left than any of the New Democrats, with space to spare.”
“People say there’s no democracy but I was obliged to listen,” Chrétien told Le Devoir.
Under the leadership of Justin Trudeau, Chrétien’s Liberal party won the 2015 federal election after a campaign that included promises to introduce proportional representation. The promise was abandoned last year, with Trudeau explaining the move by saying that the system would “exacerbate small differences in the electorate.”
In the interview, Chrétien also commented on his distinctive clangy accent, and how he ultimately came to view it as a political asset.
“I said to my English teacher ‘free me from this damned accent,’” he told Le Devoir.
“She told me ‘Never! When your voice comes through the car radio, everyone in Canada knows it’s Jean Chrétien. Coca-Cola would pay dearly for that kind of branding!”