Toronto needs political parties

The idea that changing the municipal electoral system will fix our broken local democracy shows that the real problem has not been properly understood.

The Ontario government recently proposed changes to the municipal act that would allow municipalities to replace the “first past the post” electoral system with a ranked-ballot method. In such a process, voters get to write their ballot in order of preference.

The ranked vote won’t begin to fix Toronto’s democracy problem. If a dozen — or 20 — individuals run for a city council seat, districts will have to wait for calculations to discover that somebody few voters felt strongly about finally won. This is a better democracy?

Here’s the real problem: Our local democracy suffers from a lack of attention. People don’t turn out in municipal elections because they simply don’t know what they are voting for.

Surely, it is the greatest irony of our system: the level of government that touches our lives 24/7/365 is uninteresting to voters. Turnouts in Toronto since 1997 have averaged 44 per cent. That kind of turnout is a shame: It undermines the council’s ability to reflect the will of the electorate, and it favours the incumbents unfairly.

So what can be done? How about allowing people to form parties at the municipal level? Not loose alliances among a few councillors, but real parties that can raise and pool money, that can hire expertise to craft policy and that can run on real programs. This is the practice in other large cities in Canada like Vancouver and Montreal. Political parties bring many ingredients to political life that will actually move our local democracy in the right direction: 1. Parties can educate: A party label tells voters what they are voting for. They can investigate issues, propose solutions and promise to implement them if they elected. Parties — their leaders and their members and candidates — must defend their programs and explain it. 2. Parties recruit individuals: They have to use a screening process. This is no guarantee of honesty, but parties can be judged by the quality of the people who lead them and the candidates they put forward. If we want more women and better representation from the many segments of our population — including people who have great ideas and energy but little money — parties are the institutions most likely to make that happen. 3. Parties can punish: City districts should not be personal fiefdoms. A councillor’s votes should be largely predictable, and when they are not the councillor should be held accountable. Voters can’t be expected to watch ever single municipal vote and to hold councillors to account for their flip-flops and contradictions; parties can. 4. Parties can be held accountable: If things don’t go the way they should, voters would know who to blame and “throw the bums out.” Right now, nobody knows who is accountable for what: who to punish, who to reward for clever ideas and practices. It’s a mystery to the vast majority. No wonder people don’t turn out.

Toronto has a budget of more than $10 billion — larger than most provinces — yet it is run like a village by unknowable independents. There’s a reason why city planning has, for generations, lagged behind other world-class cities. City council runs in all directions all the time as councillors make their own private deals with each other. Anyone who rides the transit system, tries to travel by bike, or is caught yet again on a congested street, knows exactly what I’m talking about. Who is accountable for the fact that our beloved city has the transit system that would be better suited to a town a third its size?

With parties, voters would be in a better position to judge who is working for the city and who is not. Just like at the provincial or federal levels, voters would be more knowledgeable about platforms and perhaps would feel their votes have meaning. More than that, our city would have new blood circulating in its political veins, and the death grip of incumbents will be loosened.

Tinkering with how we select representatives might be attractive to some, but it won’t solve the sickness of our local democracy.

Instead of wasting time on manipulating a voting system few people favour, Queen’s Park should amend the Ontario Municipalities Elections Act to allow parties to organize and finance themselves. Enough with unaccountable incumbents and unknowable candidates — our democracy deserves a lot better.

With parties, voters would be in a better position to judge who is working for the city and who is not.