Make electoral reform happen now

By Joyce A. Green

No doubt many readers will recall that during the 2015 federal election, the current Prime Minister promised us we were enduring the last election conducted under the plurality, or first-past-the-post (FPTP) system and that the next federal election would be conducted under a new and more representative system.

That, I knew, would strengthen our electoral democracy and bring new politics and political voices into the House of Commons. (I rely on scholarly sources for my claims. I’m a political scientist and have been concerned with electoral reform and democratic representation for many years now.) I know many Canadians who relied on that promise and voted Liberal in the last election exclusively because of Mr. Trudeau’s promise to terminate the unrepresentative plurality electoral system and give us a more democratic and representative system.

But the Prime Minister has reversed himself on this, first by flirting with the Conservatives’ proposal for a national referendum (referenda generally fail when people don’t understand the material well; the Charlottetown Accord and the Brexit are just two examples of this). Second, by failing to provide good public education on the subject; third, by setting up a laughable ‘push-poll’ posing as democratic consultation; fourth, by dallying around with an incompetent Minister and an infinitely elastic time line; fifth, by ignoring the scholarship on the matter – including the important multi-state, multi-year study of Harvard scholar Pippa Norris; and finally, by offering us the facile and unbelievable excuse that, by abandoning electoral reform, he was saving Canadians from extremist voices in politics. In our political context, those voices would include the NDP and the Green Party and other movements that Canadians wanted to see in politics.

With his reversal on electoral reform Mr. Trudeau has demonstrated a degree of political opportunism that is disappointing. The current FPTP system suits the Liberals (and the Conservatives), not because it produces good democratic representation (it doesn’t) but because it has historically often produced majority governments from minority shares of the popular vote.

The new Prime Minister has impaired his political integrity in the eyes of many, many Canadians who were preparing for a better electoral system and a stronger democratic quotient, and who relied on his promise when casting their 2015 ballots.

Canadians, however, can always raise their voices in dissent. It is not too late to write the Prime Minister, the laughably-named Minister for Democratic Institutions, and their counterparts in the opposition parties (Tom Mulcair, NDP; Rona Ambrose, Conservative Party; Elizabeth May, Green Party; Rhéal Fortin, Bloc Québécois; and our MP, Wayne Stetski) and demand that this broken promise be mended. We could even have a new system for the next election if we selected proportional representation, which is simple to administer and simple in its outcomes: parties get seats in the same proportion as their vote shares, no more and no less.

– East Kootenay resident Joyce A. Green is a professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina, Sask.

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