The winding road toward electoral reform

Editor’s note: First of two parts; the second part will be published in Saturday’s edition.

As I stated in my last article, I do believe that we need electoral reform. I’ll even take that a step further and suggest that we need to revise the entire Canadian party system as well as the make-up of Parliament. The revised system that I propose here in this two-part series is premised on a few important items: less government is more, affordability, accountability, and good governance.

I suggest we eliminate all the current parties and ditch the current provincial/territorial seat allocation. Eliminate the senate entirely, because while senators purport to speak for Canadians, having not been elected, they’re not answerable to voters.

We can simplify and streamline government by creating three new parties. We can think up fancy names later, but for now, let’s call these parties Right Party, Left Party, and People’s Party.

Obviously, Right and Left are reflective of the opposite sides of the political spectrum. How close either of these parties will be to centre will be determined by the parties themselves.

People’s Party would attract voters who can’t choose between Right and Left, who may support elements of both Right and Left platforms/policies, or who might also include those who are looking for something different from government.

Each province and territory would have just five seats in the new Canadian House of Commons, so that the total number of sitting members in the House of Commons would number just 65.

If the idea of reducing our elected members to this level seems extreme, consider for a moment that the United States of America has 535 elected members in Congress, including 100 elected senators, for a country that has a population of 326 million.

At approximately 36.5 million, Canada’s population is only a fraction of that in the U.S. If we made the numbers in Canada proportional to that of the U.S., we’d have just 60seats. With this comparison, my suggestion of 65 seats might seem less unreasonable.

The argument goes that having a large number of backbenchers keeps government, Cabinet and the Prime Minister, accountable. The need for having backbenchers to ensure this accountability becomes null and void if we implement the accountability measure that I discuss in Part II of this article.

In each province and territory, the Right and Left Parties would contest for four seats, with the fifth seat reserved for a People’s Party member. Representation in the House of Commons would be 52 seats occupied by elected members of the Right and Left Parties, and 13 seats held by the People’s party; total seats would be just 65.

The People’s Party is not meant to govern. It is meant to provide balance in the House, and to inform the policies of the Left and Right Parties; therefore, it plays crucial roles in governance.

Each province and territory would create four electoral districts, proportional by population. The list of People’s Party candidates will be drawn from the entire province.

Essentially, in an election, the Right and Left Parties would contest to form the next government, and would do so by winning a minimum of 27 seats.

In the event of a tie, the leaders of all three parties would meet with the Governor General of the day during which time the leaders of the Right and Left Parties would present their best arguments for forming the next government.

The leader of the People’s Party in consultation with the Governor General would make the decision as to which of the two parties would form the next government.

In Part 2, I will extend my argument to encompass a revision to the Canadian electoral process.