NDP KEEPS AN OPEN MIND ON ELECTIONS, IN THEORY
AG says he’s unbiased as government puts together a panel intent on reform
In preparing for public consultations on the coming referendum on electoral reform, the NDP government recently recruited a panel of academic advisers who were mostly critical of the status quo.
One of the four was Max Cameron, director of the centre for democratic institutions at the University of B.C., who is on record as believing the system is in need of reform.
“It tends to create false majority government,” Cameron declared on the eve of a UBC-hosted forum in 2016. “We’ve had many governments in Canada that have not had the majority of the popular vote but win a majority of the seats, which gives it 100 per cent of the power.”
He went on to argue that proportional representation would better represent the public and force parties to work together.
“We might, in fact, get more progress on a range of policy issues,” said Cameron, who added that the current system encourages “politicians to exaggerate their differences, highlight wedge issues that divide rather than unite Canadians, and place partisanship ahead of the common good.”
Then there’s Genevieve Fuji Johnson, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University. Before the last federal election, she was one of several hundred Canadian academics who went public with the urgent need for electoral reform.
“We need an inclusive and functioning representative democracy based on a fair and proportional voting system,” the letter, signed by more than 500 people, declared.
“We urge the parties to include in their platforms a commitment to conducting a process that would bring together citizens and experts to design a proportional model for Canada.”
Also consulted on the exercise in B.C. was Jonathan Rose, political scientist at Queen’s University. He was academic director to the Ontario citizens assembly on electoral reform, which produced a proposal for proportional representation that was put to referendum in 2007 and soundly defeated.
Earlier this year when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abandoned a promise of electoral reform and turned his back on proportional representation, Rose accused him of acting in haste.
“I knew the prime minister was in favour of preferential ballots, but I didn’t know he was completely antithetical to PR,” Rose told the Huffington Post. “PR systems can be created so they are stable and they can be created so that it doesn’t affect representation of parties, really.”
Valid viewpoints to be sure, and quite likely representative of the majority viewpoint in academia.
But it does raise the question put to B.C. Attorney General David Eby at a news conference Thursday, namely whether any of the academic advisers recruited by his ministry had a good word to say about the current electoral system, known as first past the post.
It turned out one did: Peter Loewen, political scientist at the University of Toronto.
“Canada has functioned relatively well as a democracy,” Loewen argued in a piece published in the Ottawa Citizen a little over a year ago.
“We have had nearly 150 years of uninterrupted democratic rule with dozens of peaceful transfers of power. By the standards of the times, our elections have been well conducted, our franchise liberally composed and our policies relatively enlightened.
“That this country has been held together and integrated might be dumb luck. It may also have something to do with an electoral system that has rewarded parties that do the work between elections of building the largest possible coalitions of people and then putting in place policies that address their diverse demands.”
In fairness to Loewen and his three colleagues, they played only a limited role in providing advice on the consultation process launched this week via a government website. (Details at engage. gov.bc.ca/HowWeVote).
The academics were not, as the ministry of attorney general hastened to point out, “responsible for the website’s design or content.” They did review the posted information on voting systems as well as the accompanying questionnaire that is the main mechanism for public consultations.
Some of the questions struck me as being crafted to deliver a rosy view of the partnership now being promoted by the NDP- Green alliance in the legislature.
For instance, participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement with the view “there should be a greater diversity of views represented in the legislative assembly” and that “the party that wins the most seats in an election should have to compromise with other parties, even if it means changing campaign commitments.”
Another question asks participants to choose between “MLAs who do what their party promised” and “MLAs who do what their constituents want.”
Not clear what that has to do with electoral reform, since party-line rigidity occurs in the status quo as well as any alternatives.
The questions are online, returnable by Feb. 28. The ministry will conduct other consultations to ensure a further diversity of views. Then it will be up to the cabinet to translate the feedback into a ballot question or questions.
Eby, for his part, promised to recuse himself from further cabinet deliberations and serve as “a neutral arbiter to ensure the referendum is conducted fairly and in accordance with B.C. law.”
But he’s already participated in the key decisions, including voting for the enabling legislation for the referendum now before the house and abandoning Premier John Horgan’s preelection promise of a single question with a yes or no answer.
Now he says he’s neutral — but like the panel of academic advisers, there’s no doubt which way he’s leaning in terms of an outcome.
(David) Eby, for his part, promised to recuse himself from further cabinet deliberations and serve as ‘a neutral arbiter.’