Electoral reform back in the spotlight

After years of study, debate and political promises, Canada may be on brink of putting in place a voting system that ensures Parliament’s makeup better reflects ballots cast.

Thestar.com
Sept. 10, 2015
By Bruce Campion-Smith

The Kiwis do it. So do the Germans and Scots.

Now Kelly Carmichael is hopeful that after years of study, debate and political promises, Canada may be on the brink of doing it, too.

“It” is electoral reform, putting in place a voting system that ensures the makeup of Parliament better reflects the ballots cast.

Indeed, the October election could be the last federal election using the first-past-the-post system as both Liberals and NDP have vowed changes to how Canadians elect their MPs.

“I have to say we are pretty hopeful,” said Carmichael, the executive director of Fair Vote Canada, which advocates for electoral reform.

The organization is getting ready to launch a national campaign later this month to put a spotlight on the issue and enlist the backing of candidates running in this election.

Boosters of the idea believe electoral reform would bring new voices and fresh ideas to Parliament. It would shake up the big-party dominance of the political system. It would lead to consensus-driven government and better policies.

Yet depending on the alternative model chosen, critics see a confused electorate and a Parliament that yields not compromise or consensus but paralyzing standoffs.

Carmichael says reform gives voice to groups sidelined by the current voting system. She notes that in jurisdictions that have introduced proportional representation, more women get elected.

And because of the greater diversity of political viewpoints, it produces better policies because of the need for consensus, she said.

“You change the dynamic of government,” she said in an interview.

“When parties come together and develop policy on behalf of the citizens, it’s usually better policy that lasts the test of time,” Carmichael said.

Carmichael has fresh hope because both the Liberals and New Democrats are advocates of change.

Indeed, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau vowed in June to bring in electoral reforms, though just how that reform would take shape under a Liberal government is unclear. Trudeau said an all-party parliamentary committee would be struck to consider the possibilities - from ranked ballots, mandatory voting and proportional representation - and make recommendations.

“Within 18 months of forming government, we will bring forward legislation to enact electoral reform,” reads a Liberal policy document.

The New Democrats have long backed changes to the electoral system and have pledged to introduce a mixed member proportional system. “The current system represents some voices and silences others. We think Canadians deserve a proportional system where every vote counts,” NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said in a statement last December.

What advocates of reform want replaced is Canada’s “single-member plurality” system, also known as “first-past-the-post,” under which the candidate in each riding with the most votes wins a seat in the Commons.

It’s a winner-takes-all system that can see political parties win a majority of seats with less than a majority of votes.

For example, in the 2011 federal election, the Conservatives took 39.6 per cent of the popular vote and got 54 per cent of the seats in the Commons, ensuring them a comfortable majority.

The New Democrats took 30.6 per cent of the votes and got 33 per cent of seats. The Liberals’ 18.9 per cent of the votes translated into just 11 per cent of the seats. And the Green party got 3.9 per cent of the votes yet just one seat, equal to a 0.3 per cent share of the spots in Parliament.

But the House of Commons would have been very different had Canada had proportional representation, which awards seats according to the percentage of votes received.

The Conservatives would have been knocked down to 122 seats and the New Democrats would have remained the same at about 95 seats. The Liberals would have gone up to 59 seats, the Bloc Québécois would have gone up to 19 seats and the Green party would have gone up to 13 seats under the scenario, according to Fair Vote Canada.

Critically, that scenario would have left the Tories short of the seats needed for a majority, setting in place another spell of minority government for Canada.

Carmichael notes that the idea of reform has been the subject of 10 separate provincial and federal studies.

In 2004, the Law Commission of Canada said reform of the federal voting system should be a priority for politicians.

It said that Canada was in the grip of a “democratic malaise” marked by declining turnout, increasing cynicism and growing disengagement by young people.

It faulted the existing system for being “overly generous” to the party that wins a plurality of the vote, allowing it to use its “artificially swollen” majority to dominate the political system.

It contributed to the underrepresentation of women, minority groups and Aboriginal Peoples. And it said that vast numbers of voters who didn’t vote for the winning candidate were then disconnected from politics.

The report said that Canadians want an electoral system that better reflects today’s society, one that features a “broader diversity of ideas and is more representative of Canadian society.”
“Electoral reform is a good starting point for energizing and strengthening Canadian democracy,” the report said.

Despite the call for change, Canada has retained the electoral system it inherited from Great Britain.

Residents in Prince Edward Island, British Columbia and Ontario have rejected moves to change the voting systems in those provinces.

Academic Nelson Wiseman says there is a simple reason electoral reform never gets acted on. “It’s not in the interests of whatever party wins,” said Wiseman, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and head of the university’s Canadian studies program.

Ontario considered mixed member proportional representation and put it to a referendum in 2007. It was rejected by voters but Wiseman says the provincial Liberal government at the time never favoured change and wanted it to fail.

Putting it to a referendum was part of the strategy to scuttle the proposal, he said.

He said the government of the day has a mandate to act. “We don’t have a referendum on the budget. We don’t have a referendum on going to war. What do you need a referendum for changing the electoral system? You got elected,” he said.

Yet Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative candidate and minister of democratic reform, says a national referendum should precede any change to the voting system. He is critical of the Liberals for vowing change without specifying exactly how the voting system would be reformed.
“That is a fundamental transformation,” he told the Star in an interview.

“No government can step in and say we’re going to invent a system - after the election by the way - and then we’re going to impose it without having the voter decide in a referendum,” Poilievre said.

Electoral reform around the world

Proportional representation, a voting system that awards seats based on a party’s share of the popular vote, has been introduced in some countries and considered in many other jurisdictions, including our own. Here is a look at a few of them.

New Zealand: New Zealand uses a mixed member proportional system. Each voter gets two votes. The first vote is for the political party. It’s known as the party vote and determines the total number of seats each political party gets in parliament, according to the New Zealand Electoral Commission. The second vote chooses the MP in a riding; the candidate with the most votes wins. A political party that wins at least one electorate seat or five per cent of the party vote gets a share of the seats in parliament that is about the same as its share of the party vote.

The electoral commission provides this example: If a party gets 30 per cent of the party vote, it will get roughly 36 MPs in parliament - 30 per cent of the 120 seats. If that party wins 20 electorate seats, it will have 16 list MPs in addition to its 20 directly elected MPs.

Germany: Germans cast two votes when electing politicians to the German Bundestag or lower parliament. The first vote determines the constituency candidate; the candidate with the most votes wins. The second ballot determines the strength of each party in the Bundestag. This vote is the “decisive” one as it dictates which party, or coalition of parties, will hold the majority, according to the Bundestag website.

Half of the parliament’s 630 members are directly elected through the first ballots. The rest are elected via lists drawn up by the parties, based on the results of the second ballots. A party that gets at least five per cent of the votes gets seats in the parliament, even if it didn’t win those seats in the direct elections.

Ontario: Ontario toyed with mixed member proportional representation. In a 2007 referendum, Ontario voters were asked whether they wanted to change the current voting system. As with other proportional voting systems, there would be a two-part ballot. On the first part, voters would directly elect MPPs in 90 larger ridings. On the second part, they would have voted for their political party of choice, which would then determine 39 “at large” MPPs selected from lists submitted by the parties. Ontario voters turned thumbs-down on the idea, voting 63 per cent in favour of keeping the existing system.

Canada: In 2004, the Law Commission of Canada concluded that the current voting system was badly out of date and said a system of proportional representation was a “necessary and vital” step to improve democracy in Canada. “For an increasing number of Canadians, the imbalances in our system are unacceptable,” the report said.

The commission recommended that two-thirds of the 308 Commons seats at the time be elected in constituency seats using the first-past-the-post system. The remaining one-third would be elected from a list of candidates submitted by the parties within each province and territory to reflect their share of the popular vote. As well, one list seat each would be allotted to Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon.