THINK YOU WANT TO SEE ELECTORAL REFORM?

Kelly Mcparland says beware of what you wish for as it could get very messy.

The next time someone tells you Canada should change the way it elects governments, think of Israel.

Israel has a proportional representation system of the type reform enthusiasts like to advocate. There are many variations on proportional representation; Israel's is a fairly straightforward version. You vote for a party, not an individual candidate. The parties assemble lists of candidates, who are awarded seats based on the proportion of votes the party receives.

Sounds simple. Should work. But it's a mess. Israelis are preparing for their fifth election in four years. The last one, 16 months ago, resulted in a particularly unwieldy coalition of parties, many of which really didn't like one another and held radically different political views, all cobbled together for the overarching goal of preventing Benjamin Netanyahu from continuing as prime minister.

Netanyahu is a highly skilled politician who held power for

15 of the previous 25 years. He's leader of Likud, which regularly gets the biggest share of votes, even if that's usually a quarter, or less, of the overall count. Any party that meets a minimum threshold of votes (currently

3.25 per cent) can get a seat.

With anywhere from eight to 13 parties qualifying, Netanyahu has proven skilled at pulling together assemblies of partners willing to keep him in power in return for specified goodies, like a cabinet seat, policy favour or budget concession.

By March of last year his latest stint had lasted 12 years, and numerous elections, spurring other parties to put aside enough differences to gang up and push him out. No one thought the grouping would last forever, of course, but the range of differences proved so unwieldy it barely made it from last spring to this one. Netanyahu is currently on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust (hanging on as prime minister helped him put off the charges), but he could well be back in charge once the latest go-round is ended.

Israel is a unique place with historical, geographical, political, cultural, social, religious and security concerns that make it uncommonly difficult to govern. Its voting system isn't solely to blame for its struggle to find a stable governing regime, but it certainly hasn't helped. The idea behind proportional representation is to ensure the government comes as close as possible to reflecting the society it represents, based on the votes they cast. But when you have a society as rich in contrasting viewpoints as Israel, it can get decidedly onerous finding enough common ground on which to build a foundation for broad agreement. There could be as many as 14 parties contesting the 120 seats in the Knesset. All you need is a handful of seats and you too could be a power broker.

Canada is a different sort of place, and fans of electoral reform seem to assume it could switch systems with a minimum of fuss. We really only have three major parties and a couple of smaller ones. How complicated could that get? Bring in some rep by pop, the thinking goes, and you'd probably get a regular series of Liberal-ndp coalitions with a bunch of grumpy, outnumbered conservatives on the other side, which is why the Liberals and NDP tend to love the idea of a switch and the Tories don't.

The presumption doesn't necessarily hold, though. If proportional representation does anything, it's to encourage proliferation. Only six parties drew enough support in Canada's 2021 election to qualify for seats under a straightforward system like Israel's, but another 15 ran candidates. None of the 15 won enough votes to capture a seat, but in a proportional representation system the bar would likely be a lot lower. Maybe that's not a bad thing — it might certainly be more entertaining — but considering how sharply Canada has become divided along partisan, regional, language, economic, aspirational and other lines, it's not hard to imagine several more special-interest formations developing, with the potential for serious consequences, not to say disruption.

Would anyone bet against the founding of a trucker party? Lord knows what it's platform would contain. Probably something about the Governor General overthrowing the government and instituting free gasoline and a tax break on portable hot tubs. Want to bet against it attracting enough votes to gain several seats in the Commons, where it could perhaps team up with Maxime Bernier's People's party to create a faction dedicated to “more freedom” for everyone except immigrants, who wouldn't be allowed into the country in anything like the usual numbers.

Given the power that sizable blocs can enjoy in fractional Parliaments, it would provide compelling reasons for Quebec voters to coalesce behind the array of nationalist, sovereigntist/separatist movements already on hand and create a single entity able to raise its ability to demand concessions to new heights. The main federal parties barely exist in Quebec provincial politics; the once-potent Liberals have been reduced to a couple of redoubts and could lose several seats in those come this October's election. It's easy to picture a figure as popular as Premier François Legault heading a federalist challenger in a rep by pop system, with the ability to marshal demands backed by a bulging block of seats devoted entirely to Quebec interests.

If Quebec goes, Alberta would have good reason to follow. An Alberta Party, or a joint Alberta-saskatchewan entity, could take up where the Reform party left off, splintering the Tories once again while saving Western conservatives from fraternizing with those annoying Ontario moderates who keep getting in the way of social conservatism and gun rights. Who knows, if Legault's Quebec faction could hive off enough seats to enfeeble a Liberal-ndp alliance, perhaps a Sask-ab bloc could partner with a Bernier bloc and a Trucker bloc to keep any form of workable government from taking office, and Canada too could have regular, futile trips to the polls in search of stability.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course. We might all learn to rally round the flag (the one we're still allowed to fly) and seize on a shared vision of Canada without the regional, social, cultural, economic and geographic divisions that are eating at the seems. But that doesn't look to be the trend.

Would anyone bet against the founding of a trucker party?