Election showed why we need voting reform
Ignore critics: Proportional representation nothing to be afraid of, says David Kilgour.
In our recent federal election, the “first-past-the-post” electoral system again proved deficient for voters, good governance and democracy, primarily because the popular vote each party received wasn’t reflected fairly in the number of MPs it elected.
This allowed the Liberals to elect 155 of the 338-member House of Commons with only 33 per cent of the total votes cast nationwide. The Conservatives won only 122 MPs despite receiving 34.4 per cent of the total votes.
NDP voters cast about 16 per cent of Canada’s votes, but elected only seven per cent of the MPs. Green party supporters cast about six per cent of the votes, but elected only three MPs.
The Bloc Québécois elected 32 MPs while receiving only eight per cent of the votes nationally. Bloc voters cast about 33 per cent of the votes, but elected about 41 per cent of Quebec’s MPs. Liberal voters cast about 34 per cent of the votes in La Belle Province but elected about 45 per cent of its MPs. Conservative voters cast about 16 per cent of the provincial votes but elected only 13 per cent of the MPs. NDP voters, with about 11 per cent of the votes, elected only one MP. Green voters comprised about four per cent of the provincial total, but elected no one.
The NDP, with 16 per cent of the national votes, won only 25 seats in the Commons. The Greens, with six per cent, managed only three seats.
Under proportional representation, the seat count would have been about 116 Liberals, 117 Conservatives, 57 NDP, 22 Greens and 26 Bloc.
Our electoral system shrieks for reform under the modern democratic principle that a party should obtain about the same number of MPs as its share of the national votes. Electoral reform should be one of the first initiatives of the new Parliament.
Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom are the only major western democracies still using the outdated first-past-thepost voting system. Each faces major regional and governance issues.
Réal Lavergne of Fair Vote Canada, a non-governmental organization, notes, “Among the world’s 35 strongest democracies, 25 use PR and only six use winner-take-all systems … (C)ountries with PR do better on a wide range of criteria, yielding a higher level of (voter turnout), economic equality, greater representation of women in parliament, a more collegial style of politics, better economic management and better environmental performance.”
Opponents of PR claim that “too much democracy” reduces the possibility of forming effective governments, but the list of nations using PR — including Germany, Switzerland and Sweden — indicates otherwise.
PR leads to frequent coalition governments, but Canadian
Electoral reform would reduce the polarization of the various regions ... because there are voters of all stripes in all areas.
political parties are already coalitions of internal factions. PR coalitions are more representative of voters and negotiations are more visible than those done within parties behind caucus doors. Coalitions of two or more parties tend to be closer to public opinion on issues than one-party governments are.
Critics say that PR allows extremists to be elected, but they overlook that in Germany’s PR model, for example, parties require more than five per cent of the popular vote before being allowed a representative in the Bundestag.
PR implies more politicians, say naysayers, but the Law Commission of Canada, for one, recommends keeping the same number of MPs from each province/territory, but making every three ridings into two larger ones and adding regional MPs elected by voters unrepresented by the local election results.
Choosing the best model of PR for Canadians is important. An appropriate model is the hybrid known as Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) used in Germany, New Zealand and elsewhere. Each elector gets two votes, with one being applied to a local district candidate whose election is determined by first-past-the-post. The other is applied to the national parties. The seats in Parliament are allocated on the basis of the votes going to each party. If not enough MPs are elected in constituencies to reflect a party’s national vote, it gets additional seats from its national party list to “top up” its number of seats.
Electoral reform would reduce the polarization of the various regions in Canada, because there are voters of all stripes in all areas. Our archaic voting system exacerbates regional differences by rewarding parties with a high geographic concentration of votes at the expense of parties whose support is more evenly distributed.
David Kilgour served in the House of Commons from 1979 to 2006, including a stint as secretary of state for Asia-Pacific.