Platforms might not mean much with no majority

We’d get a combination of Liberal and NDP promises

I taped the season-opening hockey game last week and, along with a couple of hundred neighbours, attended an all-candidates debate at our local town hall. In fact, the minor party candidates hadn’t been invited, while the Conservative, who is unlikely to win, decided he had better things to do (maybe watch the game) so it was actually a two-candidates debate: Liberal Marc Garneau, whom all Canadians know, against NDPer James Hughes, a former New Brunswick deputy minister best known locally as director-general of a major homeless shelter. They’re an impressive pair, and though they often disagreed, the debate was civil and friendly with no interruptions. Why couldn’t their leaders debate like that?, my wife wondered.

One thing the two candidates did agree on, warmly and enthusiastically, was that if Stephen Harper doesn’t get a majority, he’s gone. They wouldn’t say how — and without knowing the final seat count it’s basically silly to ask — but some way, as soon as possible, the Tories would be voted down in the House and someone else, presumably the leader of the second-place party, would be put forward for the Governor General’s attention. The Governor General could ignore that nominee and call another election. But elections cost an ungodly amount of money these days — almost as much as an afternoon’s worth of campaign promises — so it seems unlikely His Excellency would grant that request.

Liberal momentum and a likely “ballot-box bounce” for the Conservatives mean a majority government isn’t out of question. But if we don’t get one, we’re basically in the dark as to what kind of government we’ll have. With no majority we’ll get some combination of Liberal and NDP programs. Will it be the NDP’s balanced budget with the Liberals’ middle-class tax cut and higher top rates? Or the Liberals’ unbalanced budget with the NDP’s daycare plan and higher corporate taxes? Will the new government repeal the Clarity Act or Bill C-51 or both or neither?

It all depends on who gets how many seats and how the negotiations go after the respective caucuses assemble — or on what “conscious parallelism” produces if the two parties decide against a formal coalition.

Voting is always tricky. The disadvantage of democratic choice is that, unlike in markets, we can’t each of us get exactly what we want. It’s like going to a restaurant with three set meals (each with 35 courses, given the modern appetite for government), but we can’t pick and choose. We do get to express our preference among the three menus, but in the end we all have to eat what the majority, or maybe just the plurality, of diners selects.

But in the current election we now seem to be choosing from between the Tories’ relatively well-defined menu and some unspecified combination of the Liberal and NDP menus. Trust me, Donald Trump would say if he were the maitre d’, it’ll be terrific. Those of us who don’t like surprises and prefer electing a government with a clear platform it can be held accountable for aren’t happy with what amounts to blind voting.

Unfortunately, another thing the Liberal and NDP candidates agreed on warmly was that this should be the last election under “first past the post.” If they take power, we’ll quickly move to some form of proportional representation, which means we’ll hardly ever have a majority government again. The last time a federal party got 50 per cent of the vote, and it got 50.0 per cent exactly, was 1984. The time before that, 1958.

From now on, if we do go to proportional representation, party platforms will be discarded the minute the vote is in and the parties start bargaining over who will form the government. But if the parties build their platforms knowing they’ll be torn down as soon as the votes are counted, just how useful or informative do you suppose those platforms will be?

It’s like going to a restaurant with three set meals … but we can’t pick and choose.