Conservative Party of Canada
Green Party of Canada
Liberal Party of Canada
New Democratic Party (NDP)
Analysis
The case for electoral reform in Canada is a no-brainer. In the most recent (2011) election, 61.4% of eligible voters actually voted; of those, 39% voted for the Conservatives. And yet, because of our antiquated First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system, the Conservatives won a majority.
Think about that. Just 24% of eligible voters voted in a majority government.
According to a 2013 poll, Canadians widely support proportional representation (PR):
77% support from self-identified Liberal voters, 61% from Conservative voters, 82% support from NDP voters, and 93% from Green Party voters. Only 18% of all poll respondents opposed such a change. “This is not a left or right issue. Regardless of which party they support, voters understand that proportional representation would benefit our democracy,” said Doug Bailie, president of Fair Vote Canada (FVC), Canada’s citizens movement for electoral reform.
Both the NDP and the Green Party are long-time advocates of PR. Jack Layton included it in the NDP’s platform in the previous (2011) federal election, and Elizabeth May has said it is one of their platform’s three non-negotiable pillars (the others being real action against climate change and repealing Bill C-51).
Fair Vote Canada strongly advocates the system. And it’s been shown around the world to be much fairer for women.
So how does proportional representation work? A popular version is MMP or mixed-member proportional representation, the system used in places like New Zealand and Germany, where voters cast a two-part ballot, selecting both a preferred local candidate and a political party:
Perhaps my personal favourite aspect of PR is the way it brings an end to “strategic voting” — that horrible habit of voters to “hold their nose” and vote for one party simply to oppose another. Under PR, voters are liberated to vote for the party whose values align most closely with their own — and their vote is never wasted. Every vote counts. It doesn’t matter if your riding is-and-forever-has-been a particular party’s stronghold. Instead of not bothering to vote (“it won’t make any difference”), now you can vote for any party, and your vote matters.
Trudeau supports electoral reform but has said he opposes PR. To that, Mulcair has said “Trudeau is either mischaracterizing proportional representation or doesn’t understand it. The reality is proportional representation is used around the world to make parliaments more reflective of the voters, and work more cooperatively.”
And Mulcair speaks the truth. But let’s get to the heart of Trudeau’s opposition. It’s nothing to do with any desire that MPs “represent actual Canadians”. Rather, he favours a different form of electoral reform, if we are to have any: something called Preferential Ballot. Other Liberals support it too (here and here). Columnist Mia Rabson nails it when she writes:
The Liberals […] favour a preferential or ranked-ballot system, and that is what Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is pushing.
A ranked-ballot system sees voters rank the choices first to last, with the candidate with the lowest number of votes dropped each round and his or her votes distributed to the second or third choices, until someone wins with at least 50 per cent of the vote.
This is the system most political parties use to elect their leaders. It’s also the system that would benefit the Liberals the most, as the party usually seen to be in the centre of the others and most likely to be the second choice of NDP or Conservative voters.
Even Manitoba Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux said he had to admit the system each party supports pretty much lines up exactly with the system that benefits that party the most.
A CBC analysis, Electoral reform: which party would benefit the most?, agreed: each party supports a system that would be beneficial to them. It came up with seat estimates (and these are rarely to be trusted) under the three aforementioned systems, and the results showed reasonable alignment between the parties’ desired system and greatest increase in seats. Note: the argument wasn’t perfect, as according to those projections, the NDP (who support PR) supposedly would come out better under the Preferential Ballot system supported by the Liberals.
Over the years, Trudeau’s position on electoral reform has evolved. He slightly opened the door to PR with his promise to “launch an all-party consultation” to produce “recommendations” for party reforms (Resolution 31) — though it was unclear from the wording whether anything need come of these “recommendations”. Some saw this Resolution 31 as a vote-grabbing calculated move by the Liberals to give the appearance of supporting reform while allowing themselves a way to avoid it should they come to power. Just look at similar initiatives among the provinces. In BC, Ontario and PEI, Liberal parties, while in opposition, promised electoral reform. Once they came to power, they created citizens assemblies, and these assemblies recommended different forms of PR. Unfortunately, arbitrarily high win thresholds set by the Liberals (for example, 60%) ensured these referendums would fail. In the end, all referendums were rejected by voters.
Then in June, Trudeau announced a 32-point plan to “restore democracy to Canada” where he promised to end FPTP. He would “introduce electoral reform legislation within 18 months of forming government. The legislation would be based on the recommendations of a special, all-party parliamentary committee mandated to fully and fairly study alternatives to first-past-the-post, including ranked ballots and proportional representation. The committee would also explore the notions of mandatory voting and online voting.”
So now all of the progressive parties — Liberal, NDP, and Green — are promising electoral reform. It is cause for celebration.
Or is it?
Don’t get your hopes up.
See, my biggest concern with proportional representation (or electoral reform of any sort) is the difficulty in finding politicians who will actually follow through. Politicians trumpet the benefits of electoral reform and vow to make this election the last under First-Past-the-Post, if voters will only vote for them. But that support swiftly evaporates as soon as those same politicians take power, because FPTP serves them better than any alternative.
We saw this most recently in Alberta, where the provincial NDP won a false majority due to their First-Past-the-Post system. (Aside: just a day earlier, Alberta’s Green Party correctly predicted First-Past-the-Post would deliver unfair results, and stressed the need for PR.) The Alberta NDP’s abandonment of PR is poignant:
The Alberta NDP supports PR. The party ran on it in the last election, and in January, its platform, which is still cached online, was still promising that an NDP government would “set up a system of proportional representation.”
In February, they quietly dropped that sentence, and they did not campaign on PR.
We’ve seen it in Vancouver’s elections, as detailed here:
How supportive of PR has Vancouver’s current governing party been? When Vision Vancouver came to power in 2008, it was perceived as being an ardent proponent of municipal voting reform—and perhaps to a lesser degree, of PR specifically. For example, Vision’s 2008 election campaign platform included “reforming our electoral process”. …
However, by October 2009, Vision councillor Kerry Jang had distanced the party from voting-system reform, stating that the matter was “just not hot on people’s agenda”. He said that the party instead wanted to advocate for a more “comprehensive package” of electoral reform that included campaign finance and disclosure rules. As such, the promised 2011 plebiscite on Vancouver’s voting system did not materialize.
Since then, Vision’s statements about PR have been carefully crafted to appear supportive of PR without explicitly advocating for it.
We even saw this “I support PR when it suits me” with Stephen Harper himself, who ironically once co-authored a defense of proportional representation, arguing that it would be in the best interests of small-c conservatives to adopt such a system since they would never form a majority government. But since taking power, the status quo has been just fine for him. (sources here, here, and here)
So while I wholeheartedly applaud Trudeau’s coming around, and Mulcair’s promise to usher in PR should his NDP form government — and he stresses “we’re very clear on this” — I take all with a grain of salt. I remain very, very skeptical. Mulcair has promised that if he forms government, he’d introduce it before the next election (2019), but he’s set himself no intermediate milestones to track his progress (Trudeau, to his credit, has set himself 18 months to form legislation). Much can happen between now and 2019. Politicians like to believe voters forget. And many voters do.
Picture this scenario: it’s 2019, and you’re Tom Mulcair, and you’re faced with the choice of keeping the status quo of FPTP (breaking one of your election promises from four years back!) or guaranteeing the loss of NDP seats in the coming 2019 election by ushering in electoral reform (putting at risk your government’s position of power). It’s an easy choice. Some excuse could be found, no doubt about it.
In July, the NDP policybook was pulled from their website, and with it, all mention of PR. For a period of a few months, there was no longer any mention of electoral reform on the NDP website. This seemed to be history repeating itself — the same pattern we saw with Rachel Notley:
Since then, the NDP have published their full platform, and it does include a mention of PR, though I had hoped to see more emphasis placed on it and more details provided, in an 81 page platform. It says, simply, “Make your vote truly count by bringing in a system of mixed-member proportional representation that is appropriate for Canada in our first mandate.”
From where I sit, the Green Party alone can be counted on to continue to push for electoral reform post-election. And I say this not from any partisan standpoint. Looking at things objectively, the Green Party is the only party we know 100% will continue to benefit from PR, as they will not be the governing party. (They’re hoping for a dozen seats at most.) Whereas it’s in the governing party’s interest to keep FPTP in place (be it Liberals, NDP or Conservatives that is governing come Oct 20th), it will continue to be the Green Party’s interest to replace it.
The fact remains, a majority of Canadians want some form of PR. It’s up to those Canadians to vote in the politicians they feel will be least likely to renege on their promise for a fairer voting system. Having a contingent of Green MPs in Parliament to hold their colleagues’ feet to the fire and press them for electoral reform can only be a good thing.
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I. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/02/mulcair-ndp-proportional-representation_n_6407056.html
II. http://theecoreport.com/lynne-quarmby-seeks-the-green-party-nomination
III. http://campaign2015.fairvote.ca
http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/vision-green/government/democratic-renewal
IV. http://craigscott.ndp.ca/democraticreform
V. http://electoralalliance.ca/justin-trudeaus-response-proportional-representation
http://democraticvotingcanada.blogspot.ca/2014/03/trudeau-chooses-vanity-over-democracy.html
http://rabble.ca/babble/canadian-politics/trudeau-backs-proportional-representation
VII. http://campaign2015.fairvote.ca
http://commonground.ca/2015/01/ndp-committed-proportional-representation/
Burnaby North - Seymour 