Focus on MPs we elected, not how they got here
We should ensure government is held to account, says Steven Chaplin.
It is as inevitable as day following night and election following election that Canadian newspapers will publish articles singing the praises and benefits of proportional representation over firstpast-the-post election results. But the practical realities of the recent election results for governing Canada would not have been all that different under PR.
In a recent Citizen article, David Kilgour sets out what the results would have been if the entire country’s collective votes had been used to produce a House of Commons based on proportional representation. It is only in that scenario that the combined seats of the Liberals and NDP (the Liberals’ most natural ally) would not produce a majority support of more than 170.
If one considers a provincially based proportional representation model (each province’s seats apportioned proportionally on the provincial votes), or a mixed model with half the seats in a province based on actual results and half on a provincial proportional basis (a mixed-member proportional — or MPP — model), the result would be a combined Liberal and NDP majority similar to the numbers that the actual election produced.
In the regional and mixed member scenarios, the combined Liberal and NDP seats would total 176 to 179 (versus the actual 181); albeit with a greater portion of NDP members (42 to 60).
In other words, the form that the government would take — a Liberal minority with the support of one party, the NDP, to provide majority stability — would still be the outcome.
This is not to suggest that there might not be some benefits of proportional representation: for instance, all parties (except the Bloc Québécois) would have representation from most of the provinces and the structure would give the “smaller” parties greater proportions in the House. And there might be different levels of voter participation. But there are still the unknowns of proportional representation, including who controls the lists and the accountability for people to fill the proportionally assigned seats; the changing political dynamic as one moves away from a representative system to a fully party-based one; and the risk of instability where the right and left are closely divided, as is the case in Belgium and Israel. Are the risks of all of that worth it? It is hard to say.
No electoral system is perfect, particularly in a world where politics, politicians and government seem distant and the electorate becomes more cynical, regardless of the electoral system. Perhaps the answer lies in making the system we have work better for us, focusing on what we can expect from those who are elected once they are elected, rather than fiddling with how they get there. We should focus on parliamentary and government reform rather than electoral reform.
Expecting more from those who are elected, once elected, will provide greater ongoing democratic engagement than any electoral reform. We have elected 338 MPs, not just five parties with varying numbers of seats. We should be working to ensure that their voices, and through them our voices, are better heard and the government is held to account daily. Less party discipline, and changes to House rules that favour government, are a good place to start. Freeing MPs from stifling party discipline is a more sensible approach than handing parties even more power and control in a proportional representation model.