{"id":15373,"date":"2015-11-08T09:27:01","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T14:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=15373"},"modified":"2015-11-08T09:27:01","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T14:27:01","slug":"proportional-representation-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/proportional-representation-in-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Proportional Representation in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"
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[youtube=https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=laUPeXZlPEg]<\/p>\n

Another Canadian election has gone by where the majority government<\/strong> is formed by a party winning only 40% of the popular vote. This has political watchers and pundits increasingly vocal about changing the electoral system. But most of them agree it needs changing.<\/p>\n

So far, however, the Liberals are mum on how their campaign promise to reform our electoral system will be implemented. And while I have faith our new Prime Minister will be true to his word, since it will come from a\u00a0committee effort, one can only wonder what sort of camel that horse will be.*<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the past few years, I have become increasingly interested in election reform and the institution of a better, more equitable and more democratic form of representation. With the passage of the voter control legislation by the Harper Conservatives – a law that represses voter participation in our democracy, rather than encouraging it – I became concerned that unless we change the system, we are doomed to continuing abuses in our less-than-representational governments.<\/p>\n

However, I have yet to see proposed a system that, in my mind, works efficiently. Proportional voting<\/a> has three distinct methods, and a couple more sub-methods, none of which strike me as entirely satisfactory. But all seem more fair than our current method in giving Canadians real representation. Fair Vote Canada<\/a> notes the goal of proportional representation is…<\/p>\n

…to balance the benefits of introducing some element of proportionality with the capacity to maintain accountable government, most notably as a direct link between elected politicians and their constituents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back in 2007, there was a referendum in Ontario for a mixed-member\u00a0proportional system<\/a>. It failed (36.9%) to garner the support, probably because the proposed system was simply too damned complicated. Selling a new voting method to the public is never going to be easy easy, but this one sank itself by being so hard to articulate. Plus the process of explaining (and selling) it was poorly organized. As Wikipedia<\/a> notes:<\/p>\n

A June Environics poll showed that 70% of those polled were not familiar with the proposal, including over 50% who knew nothing at all about the upcoming referendum…\u00a0Citizens were expected to get the information they needed from various websites or from the press. Remarkably, although the Citizens’ Assembly had produced a shorter version of their report and a short leaflet further summarizing it, Elections Ontario distributed neither, to the surprise and disappointment of the Citizens’ Assembly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it notes on the Fair Vote Canada site<\/a>, there’s more than a change to to way we count votes in a proportional method:<\/p>\n

PR Systems MUST have multi-member districts: One key feature of PR voting systems is that they use electoral districts that elect two or more MPs. PR-list and STV do this by combining current single member ridings into larger multi-member ridings. If five ridings are combined into one, then all voters in that new riding will help elect 5 MPs for that riding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recreating election districts for the whole nation is not an inexpensive proposition. Plus I expect it to be fraught with controversy as such changes in the past have been. However, I trust the pain will be worth the gain in strengthening our democracy.
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Canada – at all levels of government, including\u00a0municipalities with ward systems**<\/span>\u00a0– uses the traditional ‘first past the post’ system where the winner of any riding wins. That person doesn’t need to win a majority, just get more votes than the second-highest candidate. Hence the problem: the popular vote doesn’t count for anything in the counting.<\/p>\n

For example, in my own riding of Simcoe Grey, in 2015 Conservative MP Kellie Leitch won with 46.5% of the vote. More people voted against her than for her. But she won nonetheless, and all those other votes cast are lost, a situation replicated across Canada in every riding.***<\/span><\/p>\n

Using the current system, the seat counts came in at:<\/p>\n