Election results revive calls for change
Should Ontario join Quebec, B.C. in debate over electoral reform?
Pierre Elliott Trudeau was fond of the concept. So too was his son Justin, who pledged to make it happen. And Stephen Harper? He was so taken with the importance of electoral reform that he once described it as “the key to Canada’s survival as a nation.”
Yet once inside the halls of power, each managed to shelve the idea of updating our democracy-distorting first-past-thepost electoral system to something more modern that accurately reflects the actual vote.
The tyranny of the plurality — that winner-take-all format that awards majority governments a blank cheque to legislate with impunity, often with little more than a third of the electorate onside — never seems quite so bad when you are the winner who took it all.
Unlike his federal counterparts, Doug Ford made no such promise on the campaign trail. And now, with 40.6 per cent support, his Progressive Conservatives will wield a powerful majority in Ontario unencumbered by the pledge of reform.
While the PCs have dabbled with modernizing their internal electoral system — a weighted ballot, you may recall, was the reason Ford won the leadership in March, despite landing fewer votes than rival Christine Elliott — the party has expressed no interest in updating the ol format of Ontario. that just gave it contt
In famously flip-flopping on his reform pledge last year, Justin Trudeau incurred accusations of “betrayal” — his majority rule, based on 39.4 per cent of the popular vote in the 2015 federal election, continues apace.
So in light of all this, is it not safe to assume electoral reform, the oldest chestnut in Canadian politics, is pretty much dead? A rainbow-dream for policy wonks, unlikely to ever happen? Quite the opposite.
Thursday’s outcome in Ontario — with the clear majority of voters, nearly 60 per cent, now on the outside, looking in — makes the province prime hunting ground for activists looking to enlist the province in the reform momentum taking hold elsewhere in Canada.
“We see a shining silver lining in this terrible mood in Ontario, where you now have a govern- ment most of the people don’t want that will be doing things that most of the people don’t want,” said Réal Lavergne, president of Fair Vote Canada, a grassroots organization of 70,000 people coast-to-coast that advocates for proportional representation.
Fair Vote Canada held its annual general meeting in Ottawa on Saturday, poring over the entrails of the Ontario results. The organization itemized the shortcomings, noting that 52 per cent of Ontario voters essentially elected no one at all. But they also spent time reviewing the serious momentum building in Quebec and British Columbia, which now appear to be in a race of sorts to see which province will be first to abandon first-past-the-post and shift to proportional representation.
On Thursday, as Ontario voters went to the polls, B.C. Premier John Horgan’s cabinet finalized plans for an October referendum on a new voting system. B.C. voters will have the choice of staying with the sys- tem they have or shifting to proportional representation. If they choose the latter, a second question will then ask them to select a preference from three variations of the proportion format. If more than half of voters choose change, it will happen.
But change in Quebec could come even sooner. There, three of the four parties in the National Assembly last month signed on to an electoral-reform pact pledging to introduce a mixed-proportional voting legislation within a year of the upcoming fall election.
Unlike B.C., Quebec’s plan is not conditional upon a referendum. If the Oct. 1 election is won
gnatories, it is expected to be the last of its kind before a new format emerges.
A pact among the parties not in power — the Quebec approach — is something activists believe might work in Ontario, where after so severe an electoral shellacking, the Liberal party now faces the daunting task of rebuilding from near oblivion. Something as dramatic as signing a Quebec-style cross-party reform pledge could go a long way toward reestablishing trust. And the idea, advocates say, would find receptive ears among New Democrats and the Green party, both of which have long advocated for proportional representation.
None other than Stephen Harper had the same idea in 1996, in an article titled “Our Benign Dictatorship.” Writing for the periodical Next City with co-author and longtime ally Tom acknowledged Flanagan, that Harper “it readill is selly dom in the short-term interest of the party in power to carry out electoral reform; by definition, the system worked admirably for those now in power and changing the system might even benefit the opponents next time.”
Instead, Harper and Flanagan alighted on the idea of a coalition of conservative parties not in power coming together on the promise of making Canada’s system proportional.
The Harper/Flanagan article argues that while electoral ref form could just as easily backff enabling a “national social democratic vehicle with a genuine chance of governing” it was nevertheless the right idea for Canada.
“Only in politics do we still entrust power to a single faction expected to prevail every time over the opposition by sheer force of numbers,” Harper wrote. “Even more anachronistically, we persist in structuring the governing team like a military regiment under a single commander with almost total power to appoint, discipline and expel subordinates.”
Those words, 22 years old now, resonate still with today’s reformers, who argue that Canada can no longer afford the “policy lurch” inherent in the back-and-forth exchange of majority power. What we end up with is the creation and eventual destruction of ambitious and expensive programs — here’s your long gun registry, now it’s gone; here’s your capand-trade system; whoops, now that’s gone too — rather than reasoned, collaborative leadership that coalition governance demands.
Proportional representation — with many variants rooted around the world now, from Germany to Scotland to New Zealand — is never one size fits all, nor without drawbacks of its own. Israel, for example, operates under a remarkably simple list-based system, where power — and seats — are divvied out according to the population vote. Tiny parties often punch a a price, accordingly — in the often-agonizing ritual of building a governing coalition.
Kilometre for kilometre, you could fit Israel into sprawling Ontario 50 times and still have room to spare. Advocates for reform understand that Canadians require a more complex system that accounts for regional needs. We like someone local being accountable — which is why the options on the table in Quebec and B.C. account for both needs, mixing power at the riding level with additional seats to bring parties even with their proportion of the popular vote.
It remains to be seen which of the new systems, if any, B.C. will favour. But as it moves toward its referendum, curiosity is developing around the mixedmember proportional (MMP) representation that New Zealand adopted in 1993, when it abandoned first-past-the-post. Controversial at first, Kiwis have since grown comfortable with the format, renewing their support for it in a 2011 referendum.
Complicated? Definitely. Worth exploring? That depends on whether you like governments carrying blank cheques, Westminster-style. If you want to make sure there’s a stop payment — or at least a government that reflects the will of voters in a fair and equal
form camp argues that you owe it to yourself to learn more.