The people’s choice
If Harper proposed unilateral electoral reform, he would have been labelled a tyrant. Trudeau shouldn’t get a free pass It is up to the voters to decide how they shall choose which party to bestow power upon
The Liberal government does not have the right to change Canada’s voting system without first holding a referendum. The notion that we can fundamentally alter our democracy without subjecting the change to a full public consultation is simply wrong, as voting is not a privilege granted by a political party to the people — it is the people who vest power, for a limited time, in a political party. It is up to the voters to decide how they shall choose which party to give that power to.
Who we choose is inextricably linked to how we make that collective choice. Those who own the ultimate power of choice should not have the boundaries of how they choose set, or the rules governing their choice imposed, from without. Changing the method by which we elect politicians must be consented to by those who elect them — the voters themselves. Voters own the power of choice and the power over the rules by which they make their choice.
In the exuberance over their victory, the Liberals may feel that somehow, just by displacing former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, they, in the manner of ancient Chinese emperors, have the mandate of heaven. Fortunately for us, it is really not all that clear that heaven has much to do with Canadian politics. In fact, reviewing some of the governments and politicians we have variously elected — federal, provincial and municipal — it’s more plausible to figure that influence flows from that other, somewhat toastier jurisdiction.
The current government owes its good fortune to 39.62 per cent of the popular vote in the recent election. Harper’s government, in the election before that, owed its good fortune to 39.47 per cent of the vote. Under the old laws of political logic — those who were so rudely kept out of power during the Harper interregnum — that low percentage was too frequently interpreted as meaning that over 60 per cent of the Canadian people voted against him. And that slippery logic was enhanced by the assertion that, due to this fact, his government was really not “democratic” and thus did not have full legitimacy.
However, now that we have a Liberal government elected by almost an identical percentage of voters, it means quite the opposite: that this government speaks with the voice of the true Canada and is quite simply a shining manifestation of all that is good about Canada herself. Conservatives at 39 per cent — bagpipes at midnight; Liberals at 39 per cent — midsummer noon.
The oscillation in logic is a full 180 degrees and rests on the airy foundations of partisan self-regard and raw, unsupported assertion. Neither this government, nor any other, has the moral right to change the electoral process without prior consultation through a referendum approved by the voters. As it is, after all, the people whose sovereign power of election is the essence of any democratic system.
However, it is really not enough for the Liberals to say, now that they’re in power, that what would have been seen as deplorable, arrogant and an attack on democracy under Harper’s rule, is sweet, reasonable and much to be desired under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s. Changing the tenant of 24 Sussex does not reverse the order of nature or politics, even if those in Trudeau’s court are showing a marked tendency to regard their election as a victory, not for their party – which it was — but for the country itself.
We see that attitude most cloyingly in the repeated Trudeau boast that “Canada is back” — a slogan that’s saccharine and weirdly jingoistic at the same time.
It must be charming to look in the mirror, or an iPhone on a stick, and see Canada staring back, but at best it’s an optical delusion; at worst a self- indulgent hubris. Canada is not the Liberal party, and electing a Liberal government with 39 per cent of the vote should not be identified, and certainly not by the Liberals themselves, as a rescue of the Canadian soul. The Liberal party is, just like the Conservative party and the New Democratic Party, a partisan vehicle. It is not Canada.
So the idea of unilaterally making a decision to change our voting system without a full debate and a referendum is just simply wrong. It is not a government’s choice to make. It is the people’s choice.