ELECTORAL REFORM? NO!
The government promises change, but Canadians may not care
Let’s save the new all-party electoral reform committee a little bit of time (and it could certainly use some shortcuts, given the tight deadline it has to deliver a plan to completely overhaul our system): The 2019 federal election will employ the same system as every other vote since Confederation.
I know, the Liberals promised they would change our voting system by then, a pledge that Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef reiterated this week.
“Our government is determined to meet our commitment that 2015 was the last election to use a first-pastthe-post system,” Monsef said. It’s surprising to see her step so far out on the limb, given how little is at stake for the government on this promise and how low the odds that it will actually keep it.
Here’s the problem: The conditions required for a major change to our voting system simply don’t exist.
Almost no one is clamouring for electoral reform in Canada right now. Not everyone loves first past the post, but there isn’t a huge movement to get rid of it. Monsef says it’s why many people don’t vote, but there’s no evidence to support that claim.
One factor is the continuing popularity of the party that just won under the old system. If there was a sense that the Liberals stole the last election, things might be different. But even the people who don’t like the outcome don’t think it was unjust.
If the Liberals hadn’t thrown electoral reform into their exhaustive list of campaign promises — at a time when no one expected them to win, it’s worth noting — we wouldn’t even be talking about it. Even so, it was hardly a ballot question on which they were swept to office.
The fundamental argument that there’s something inherently wrong with first past the post simply doesn’t ring true with enough Canadians. The case is not helped by the flawed logic employed by some proponents for change. One article in the Globe and Mail this week, for example, claimed that critics say “it mutes the voices of millions of voters because it ignores the will of everyone who didn’t vote for the winner.”
Ignoring the will of Canadians sounds bad, but isn’t it fundamental to democracy that people who vote on the losing side don’t get their way? How can we have an election that concludes with every voter’s will reflected in the outcome?
What makes it even harder to have a new system in place for 2019 is the fact that there’s no consensus on what it should look like. And in order to implement such a sweeping change, at least one of two things must happen: a referendum that shows Canadians, perhaps even a super-majority of them, are in favour; or at the very least a consensus among all the major parties.
The Liberals seem very reluctant to put the issue to the people, even though it would let them off the hook for their promise if reform were defeated. And it seems unlikely that both the Conservatives and the NDP will agree on the same new format, given that this isn’t just an academic exercise: Each party has its entire future at stake in the outcome.
The composition of the panel didn’t set a tone of collaboration. By taking six of the 10 spots on the committee, the Liberals are basically taking advantage of the system they are maligning to ensure they have control over the outcome. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which this doesn’t devolve into partisan sniping.
The process is very likely to break down over whether or not to have a referendum (something that divides Liberals from Conservatives) or whether to have ranked ballots or proportional representation (something that divides Liberals from New Democrats).
Ultimately, however, it’s just not something Canadians are demanding right now. And if that’s the case, it’s hard to understand why the government would waste a lot of political capital on it. The current system works just fine, especially from the perspective of a party that just won a majority with 39 per cent of the vote.
If there was a sense that the Liberals stole the last election, things might be different. But even the people who don’t like the outcome don’t think it was unjust. — Mark Sutcliffe