Canada: Creating a Better Democracy

Ontario's Citizen's Assembly: A rare exercise in democracy indeed...

2006-09-01T21:39:00.000-04:00

There's a great editorial by Pauline Tam in today's Ottawa Citizen. She describes Ontario's Citizen Assembly process for examining our election system and gives a brief run down on what happened with BC's Citizens Assembly. Take a look at the article on Fireweed Democracy Project's website.

PR Down Under?

2006-08-28T21:56:00.000-04:00

I came across an interesting article today which argued for the introduction of proportional representation into the Australian Parliament. One step ahead of us, Australia has already implemented a PR electoral system in Tasmania and the federal senate - but not in it's federal parliament.

The PR elections system used currently in parts of Australia is called the Hare-Clark system. It's a variation on STV (Single Transferable Vote). British Columbia's failed electoral reform referendum in 2005 also proposed a STV like system (BC-STV).

FVC & PR Primer

2006-08-08T09:33:00.000-04:00

Feel like you don't know enough about Fair Vote Canada or how Proportional Representation would effect Canada? Check out this interview with Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada, by Susan Thompson - published by The Dominion.

Some thoughts from the other side of the pond...

2006-08-04T23:01:00.000-04:00

I came across an interesting article about UK reform in their House of Lords (second house, which seems to be roughly equivalent to our Senate). It appears they're having some difficulty deciding how to proceed...

The details of how such a system would work are unclear, and Ms Blears made clear she was "torn" on the idea of using proportional representation.
"The bit that I really dislike about PR is if you lose your constituency link," she said.
"I know people have got some models where you can still have a constituency link. But if you look at a lot of PR systems, particularly in Europe, you end up again with a political elite who all live in London or Madrid or Paris because you are dependent for your place on the party list."
She said she wanted to avoid a system where politicians were "dependent on patronage" rather than on their constituents.
"The last thing I want is a group of politicians who are dependent on a political party rather than the people 'out there' in their constituency who come and support them."

This argument does present a real potential problem with PR - members need to be responsible to the people (their constituency) and not rely on party patronage. It'll be interesting to see how this particular aspect of electoral reform is handled here in Canada.

Meet me at the Pub for a Chat!

2006-05-24T10:47:00.000-04:00

To all those in the Ottawa / National Capital Region area: We've just set up a form on Meetup.com to promote our upcoming Fair Vote Canada social / pub nights. We'll be having these fun filled nights one per month. This will give an opportunity to anyone who's interested in discussing or learning about electoral reform a chance to kick back in a relaxed atmosphere and chat.

For more details check out our Meetup.com site and sign up! Click here: electionreform.meetup.com/155/

See you at the pub!

Fair Vote Canada 2006 Annual General Meeting and Conference

2006-04-10T20:54:00.000-04:00

This is my public service announcment to inform you of an exciting event happening this month!

Fair Vote Canada

2006 Annual General Meeting

April 21-22, 2006 Parliament Building, West Block, Rm. 308

This event is open to anyone who wishes to attend!

Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a multi-partisan citizensÂ campaign for voting system reform. Join us for our 5th annual meeting and conference for an exciting array of speakers, presentations and discussions on electoral reform, proportional representation and the federal and provincial reform campaigns. Among the featured speakers are:

* Rick Anderson, Director, Fireweed Democracy Project; former advisor to Preston Manning

* Carolyn Bennett, MP, Social Development Critic, Liberal Party

* Bill Blaikie, MP, Democratic and Electoral Reform Critic, NDP

* Stephen Broscoe, Fair Voting BC

* Mark Greenan, Coordinator, Yes on MMP Coalition, PEI

* Jim Harris, Leader, Green Party of Canada

* Tom Kent, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Pearson; founding editor, Policy Options

* June Macdonald, Chair, Women for Fair Voting

* Heather MacIvor, political scientist, Univ. of Windsor

* Joe Murray, Chair, Fair Vote Ontario

* Scott Reid, MP, House Deputy Leader, Conservative Party

* Mercédez Roberge, Présidente, Mouvement pour une démocratie nouvelle (Quebec)

Advanced Registration Required.

To register, please go to: http://www.votepr.org/2006_agm_flyer.pdf
For more an the agenda, please see: http://www.votepr.org/pdf/2006_AGM_agenda.pdf

For more information contact: info@fairvotecanada.org

Costs:
___ Full conference fee: $80 includes Friday evening dessert and drinks; Saturday morning refreshments, Saturday lunch, coffee/juice service throughout.
___ Basic conference fee: $50 with no refreshments, lunch, coffee/juices.
___ Student/limited income: $45 with food/beverages, or $15 without food/beverages.

Electoral Reform Update: Quebec

2006-03-16T14:09:00.000-05:00

With the new Harper-Conservative government in power it's unlikely that we'll see any quick action on the topic of modernizing our outdated electoral system. However, we can look to some of the provinces to act a little sooner. Ontario is currently in the process of forming a Citizens' Assembly which will endevour to examine alternate electoral systems. If all goes as planned, a referendum to ask Ontarians if they want a new system will be held alongside the 2007 provincial election. As for Quebec, the government has just finished touring the province to hear the public's opinion on it's proposed revamped Election Act. An informative article by Montreal's "The Chronicle" details the new proposals.

Some highlights of the article:

The bill calls for 77 riding seats and 50 seats assigned to reflect proportionality, forming a total of 127 seats (as opposed to the current 125).
In the 1998 provincial election, the Liberals recieved 43.55% of the votes and 48 seats, while the PQ recieved 42.37% of the votes and 76 seats.
Under the proposed system (a variation of Mixed Member Plurality - MMP), voters will only be able to cast one ballot, meaning that they would vote as they do now: for one candidate from one party. In most other regions that use MMP, voters are given two ballots, one for the local candidate and one for the party of choice. In New Zealand this allowed 39% of voters to change parties on their second vote, something that is not possible under this proposed Quebec system.
The article states that a party would need about 13% of the vote to be able to win a seat. Unfortunately, why this is the case is not fully explained and remains unclear.
If the bill is adobted, the voting structure change would not take effect until 2011. Far too long a wait in my opinion...

The Other Ottawa Story

2006-02-13T20:35:00.000-05:00

While I have normally focus my attention on federal politics, I was lucky enough today to listen to Ottawa city councillor Clive Doucet give an intriguing talk at Carleton University. He came in to speak about urban policy and he certainly had some interesting things to say. It seems that while corporate election financing has been limited at the federal level, this is hardly the case at the municipal level. Mr. Doucet stated quite frankly that in city politics the main goal of a councillor is to keep business elites happy, and that doing so is the only way to get re-elected. He further elaborated that developers can make fortunes based on city council decisions and thus make big campaign contributions. While this is hardly a shockingly new revelation, it was still surprising to hear it being so blatantly stated by a sitting city councillor. The solution to this deplorable situation, according to Doucet, would require pressure from the grassroots to reform the municipal system.

There is no question in my mind that in a democracy, politicians truly need to be accountable to the people first and foremost. One of the best ways to ensure against any conflict of interest is to limit or preferably ban businesses from making donations to political campaigns. This has been done at the federal level and in some provinces. It now appears obvious that some form of election financing restriction needs to be applied at the municipal level. Maybe we’ll hear more about this in the upcoming Ottawa municipal elections in November…

The New Canadian Champion of Democracy

2006-02-10T08:19:00.000-05:00

It's so good it's worth repeating. Garth Turner has come out with another post that shows that he is one of the few representatives on the Hill these days who has integrity, honour, and class. The entry 'Choices' is a great piece, I hope you read it.

A Sorry Week for Canadian Democracy

2006-02-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

Anyone following the news this week must have heard by now about the massive betrayal of democratic principals that took place in Ottawa this past Monday. In forming his new cabinet, P.M. Stephen Harper made the curiously obscene move of appointing one man who had not been democratically elected, and another who had just two weeks ago run for the Liberal party. The first case was of Michael Fortier who was given the job of Minister of Public Works. Not only had he not been elected, he had absolutely no interest in running for politics. To top that off, he was brought into the fold by being appointed to the senate, making him pretty much accountable to no one: neither to the House of Commons or to any constituents. The other appointment that has caused such controversy is the new Minister of International Trade: David Emerson. Up until a few weeks ago, this man had been bashing the Conservative left, right, and centre. This won him a seat in Vancouver-Kingsway as a Liberal. But just two weeks later, he betrayed his constituents by turning into a ‘Harper cheering’ Conservative.

This has caused uproar across the country and the media has been full of stories on these new cabinet members. Frankly, there a plethora of ways you could attack (or defend) these appointments, but I’d like to approach this issue from the following two angles: the betrayal of democratic principals and the failure of our current electoral system.

In the case of Michael Fortier, the lack of democratic principals is obvious. Anyone who has not been democratically elected by the people of Canada has no business forming part of the government. I don’t care if there has been some obscure precedent for this type of action; in this day and age if you want a hand in running the country you need to be voted into office! As for David Emerson, here we have a situation of complete disregard and disrespect for constituents. What Mr. Emerson did was essentially lie to the people of his riding. He campaigned as a Liberal, viciously attacking the Conservatives. Yet, immediately after the election, when he found he was on the losing side, he changed his mind and worked his way into the Conservative cabinet. Had he been voted into office as an Independent this would have been acceptable. But, he marketed himself as having Liberal values and as a supporter of Liberal ideas, only to convert after the election was over. Now, many Conservatives had attacked Belinda Stronach when she crossed the floor last year, but this week few Conservatives dared to publicly criticize Emerson’s move. They too seem to have made an about face regarding the values of integrity they once supported. The one shining exception is Garth Turner. He has kept an open dialogue with his constituents through his blog, and has had little hesitations in speaking about the Emerson issue publicly. He stated and campaigned on his firm democratic beliefs prior to the election and he has stayed true to his values afterwards. Let’s hope that a) he keeps it up and is not intimidated by his fellow party members (i.e. the new PM), and b) other MP’s will follow in his example.

My second point is how this current scandal could have potentially been avoided if we had a more proportional electoral system. The main justification given by Stephen Harper for these appointments was that his government need representation of both Vancouver and Montreal in his cabinet. Well, as Anne McGrath pointed out on Thursday’s edition of Politics with Don Newman, with an elections system based on proportional representation the Conservatives would have likely won seat in these cities. In other words, we can make systemic changes to the way we elect Members of Parliament in order to avoid ‘the need’ to implement such gross abuses of democracy that we witnessed this week.

Elections + Media Attention = Growing Awareness

2006-02-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

The Federal election has come and gone, and as predicted we certainly ended up with some interesting results. While few were surprised that the Conservatives won more seats than anyone else, the strength of the Liberals was certainly unanticipated by many. What wasn’t surprising was once again the lack of fair representation. While on the surface the Conservatives and Liberals seemed to get approximately the appropriate amount of seats (as compared to their percentage of the popular vote), the NDP and the Green Party received far too few seats, while the Bloc Quebecois won many more seats that it deserved. Furthermore, once the results were broken down into regional groupings the lack of proportional representation was even more pronounced. For instance, the Liberals and NDP were shut out of Alberta even though they won 15% and 11% of the vote respectively. Meanwhile, the Conservatives were essentially shut out of major urban centers (apart from Calgary and Edmonton), although theses regions gave them almost half-a-million votes.

While all of this is clear evidence that our current first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system is deficient, some argue that this election’s results were perhaps not the best suited for promoting reform. In a recent round table event at Carleton University, associate professor Bill Cross pointed out that artificial majorities (where a party wins a majority government with less than 50% of the vote) are better at grabbing the public’s attention. He does have a point. Proportional representation would be much more ‘top-of-mind’ if we had a serious discrepancy between the seats won and the popular vote.

However, despite the lack of a false majority, there has recently been an explosion in the number of media articles on electoral reform. Newspapers right across the country have been publishing articles related to proportional representation. One in particular that caught my eye was in Embassy Magazine, which was written by Patricia Marsden-Dole, president of the National Capital Region chapter of Fair Vote Canada. I’m pointing this one out mainly because I wrote a letter to the editor about this article, and it actually got published! :-)

As for other new sources of info, Opinion Canada has just come out with two useful articles. The first, by Gordon Gibson, is an excellent primer on electoral system reform. The second gives a brief account of the origins of Canada’s electoral system.

Election Day is here!

2006-01-23T11:18:00.000-05:00

Well, this is it. It’s the one day that we Canadians get every so often to play politics. So get out there, cast your vote, and see what happens. My main prediction is that we’re going to see a LOT of wasted votes. In province after province, we will see a huge discrepancy between the popular vote and the number of seats won. This trend of disproportional representation will likely be particularly exaggerated in BC and Quebec. I predict that the votes in BC will be roughly split 3-ways between the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP. Yet, keep an eye out: one party (probably the Conservative) will get a huge percentage of the seats. While in Quebec, look for the Bloc Québécois to get about 75% of the seats, with only 45% of the votes. For more on predictions for tonight, check out democraticSPACE.com

Locally, I think the riding of Ottawa-Orléans will be interesting to watch. It’s a close race between the Liberal incumbent Marc Godbout, and Conservative Royal Galipeau. But the interesting part will be to see if NDP voters decide to vote strategically and switch to the Liberals to reduce the possibility of a Conservative majority. Clearly, the NDP will have a much more powerful voice in the next parliament under a Conservative minority, as opposed to a Conservative majority.

I’m sure tonight’s election coverage will be exciting, with a least a few surprises. Personally, I’ll be watching the CBC, where Ed Broadbent will hopefully be chatting up issues like electoral reform and proportional representation. Let the games begin!

Moving Towards Another False Majority

2006-01-17T12:42:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems that Canada's political pendulum has swung a little over to the right in these past few weeks. And if it swings far enough, it looks like Harper and his Conservative Party could form a phony majority government. What do I mean by that? Well, based on the current polls, the Conservatives are likely to get about 40% of the vote - far from a majority. Yet, it's possible they'll get enough seats to have 100% of the power and claim to have a mandate to govern absolutely. I'm sorry but if 6 out of 10 Canadians vote against you, that's not a strong mandate! Regardless of whether it's the Liberals or Conservatives, if a party forms a false majority government, i.e. they get less than 50% of the vote, then they don't deserve to have free reign in governing our country. What we need is an election system that is truly democratic. The Reality Check Team at the CBC have recently come out with a good article that explains how our voting system is distorting Canadian democracy.

Finally the Leaders talk about Electoral Reform

2006-01-11T17:01:00.000-05:00

On Monday’s leaders debate a question was finally asked about how the candidates felt about electoral reform and proportional representation. As you know, I had hoped that this issue would have been raised in the last debate, so I was very interested to hear what had to be said this time around. First to answer was Paul Martin. While he seemed a bit uncomfortable with the topic, he did concede that structural changes of our electoral system need to take place and that a parliamentary committee had outlined a timetable to examine this issue. He also mentioned that more women were needed in parliament, and ended by asking, “Does the system need fixing? Absolutely!” Steven Harper also seemed less than eager to face the question. However, he did admit it was a “serious problem”, though he doubted if electoral reform would create higher voter turnout. Not surprisingly, Jack Layton came out strongly for a change towards proportional representation. After explaining how archaic our current first-past-the-post system is, Layton criticized Martin for not following electoral reform committees request to produce a report on the issue. In fact the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) had all-party support in June to commission a report that should have been completed by now. Unfortunately, the Martin government choose to ignore the timing laid out by the committee and failed to begin the report before the government fell. So the question is now: will a report on electoral reform be commission when the new government takes power?

We Need a 'Fair' Debate

2005-12-19T19:25:00.000-05:00

After listening to an interview with the moderator for last Friday's leader's debate, I had hoped that there would be at least one question on electoral reform. But, unfortunately, I ended up being disappointed. And it looks like I wasn't the only one. In a press release issued today both Wayne Smith and Larry Gordon of Fair Vote Canada, along with a number of prominent Canadians, expressed their frustration at the lack of national debate on electoral reform. "On January 23, those Canadians who still vote will be forced to use a widely discredited and antiquated voting system that distorts what we say and inflames regional tensions. Yet in the last two debates, the party leaders faced not a single question about electoral reform."

Learning from PEI

2005-12-18T23:27:00.000-05:00

Well, PEI’s plebiscite on electoral reform was unfortunately unsuccessful, as we all know by now. Fortunately, however the folks at Opinon Canada and the CIRC (Centre for Research and Information on Canada) have come out with a very good article by F. Leslie Seidle with some important lessons form the PEI experience. I found it interesting that both the provincial Conservatives and Liberals came out against the mixed member proportional (MMP) system. Not surprisingly, there seemed to be a strong objection to the 'closed' party lists "(i.e. voters could vote only for the list as a whole, not for a particular name on a party’s list)". Overall, the article highlights two important issues: the need for reform supporters to fully understand the potential public concerns and the need for a well organized education campaign.

Fair Vote Canada revs up...

2005-12-12T20:05:00.000-05:00

The volunteers are in place and the kits are ready! Fair Vote Canada has set a webpage with everything needed to run a campaign in the 2006 Federal Election. The flyers, petitions, and sample articles are all set. Hopefully we'll be able to raise the public's awareness level on the need for electoral reform. For all the details, check out Fair Vote's site.