“The closer you come to true proportionality, the more complex it becomes,” speaker Norm Hart told a discussion group gathered in Sharbot Lake’s Oso Hall last week. “(So) you can never achieve true proportionality.”

Hart’s part of the evening was focused on the different voting systems democracies use around the world.

In his talk, ‘Making Every Vote Matter,’ he explained the differences, similarities, strength, weaknesses and nuances of various systems used to achieve proportional representation, ie where the number of seats a party gets in a ruling body is wholly or in part based on the percentage of popular vote.

Hart outlined several alternatives to the current First-Past-The-Post system including the Single Member Party Proportional System, Multi-Member Proportional System, and ranked balloting.

He and his Citizen’s Democracy Forum compatriots advocate the Single Member Party Proportional System whereby all members are still elected and vote but their votes are weighted the portion of the popular vote they receive.

“Under this system, Elizabeth May would get 10 votes whereas each Liberal MP would get 0.9 of a vote,” he said. “It’s not that different from the current system in that we wouldn’t have to change any ridings but it would force members to have to talk to each other.”

He said this system requires a “threshold” of having to elect at least one member and getting 3 per cent of the total vote in order to prevent “fringe” candidates from creating an unworkable parliament.

The second part of the evening was turned over to Wagerville’s own Jerry Ackerman, who has a PhD from Purdue University in agricultural economics.

Ackerman’s presentation was less lecture and more debate stimulation as he and Herb Wiseman of Comer.org led a discussion of how the federal government’s fiscal policies have led to crippling interest payments on a public debt in excess of $600 billion.

Ackerman maintains that when Canada joined the international finance system in 1974, the Bank of Canada stopped funding the government and we began to borrow the needed funds from private banks.

“The consequence of this is that the compounded interest now owed to the private banking system meant less money available for the needed goods and services (hospitals, schools, roads) while the private banks have reaped enormous profits,” he said. “What a scam.”

Ackerman advocates a return to using the Bank of Canada instead of private banks.

“Until recently, most of us assumed that states can’t go bankrupt,” he said. “We have now learned our assumption was illusory.

“What happened in Japan, Asia, Latin American and recently in Portugal, Iceland, Ireland, and Greece can happen in the U.S., Canada, England, France or Germany.

“The decisive factor here is not the absolute level of debt, but the rapid growth of interest burden this debt entails, resulting from compound interest.”

Over his long career as an MP, Scott Reid has seen a lot. As a student of, and advocate for electoral reform he has also seen how the interest of parties in power affect their attitudes to changes in electoral systems.

But, he admitted freely in a phone interview this week that he was surprised when the Liberal government abandoned their commitment to bring in electoral reform two weeks ago.

“I did not see that coming. I did not anticipate they would walk away from it in that way. I thought they were going to take a different route,” he said. “Part of the reason it surprised me was the vehemence with which the Prime Minister insisted there was no way he was going to back down from his promise.”

Reid, who first began studying electoral reform when he was a staff member of the old reform party in 1996 and has been involved in debates around the development of a new electoral system for Canada ever since, said that he did not expect the Liberals would be able to bring in a new system for the next election as promised. He said he thought they would “wait a length of time, and then say we just can’t get there before the next election, and put it off for study in some fashion. I did not think they would abandon it.”

In anticipation of a delay, he had been talking to people and beginning to work on making sure that if a citizen’s assembly was constituted to develop a new system, that it would be done right in order to allow participation on a broad level and would lead to a detailed proposal.

Unlike the Reform Party, The Conservative Party that he represents as MP for Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston takes the position that they will not pursue electoral reform if in power. But they do support the position Reid has pushed for many years, that only by being accepted through a national referendum can any new system be viable for Canada.

To those that say electoral reform cannot pass in a referendum Reid says that 5 referenda on reform have taken place in different parts of Canada since 2000 and 2 have passed.

“Those aren’t bad odds,” he said, “and I just don’t agree with those that say people cannot be trusted to make decisions on complex proposals.”

This puts him at odds with Fair Vote Canada, a group that lobbies for electoral reform but is adamant that a referendum is not the way to bring it about.

Reid believes that if a system is designed that fits the needs of Canada, and it is put out in a straightforward manner to a fair vote, it can pass in a referendum and would be good for the country.

The parliamentary committee, which he co-chaired with NDP MP Nathan Cullen last year, asked the government to develop a system that would attain a defined level of proportionality and would then be put to a national vote. He believes that any new system worth pursuing must make the electoral system a more proportional system than the current one.

“While the Liberal members of that committee did not sign off on our final report, it was not because they disagreed with proportionality. They disagreed with the timing we proposed, which was to get it done in time for the next election. They were not opposed to proportional representation, in principle, as Mr. Trudeau now says he is.”

On February 9th, Prime Minister Trudeau said “proportional representation, in any form, would be bad for Canada” which seemed like a complete about-face from the position he took during the 2015 election and kept to until two weeks ago.

In studying Justin Trudeau’s statements about reform over the years, Reid  says he now thinks Trudeau may have been opposed to reform all along, noting comments made in 2014 and at other times.

“I’m starting to think that he never supported it, which makes his election promise and everything he said over the last 18 months somewhat suspect.”

Still, Reid does not believe that the project of electoral reform is dead.

“It was never put to a vote in Canada before 2000, but it has come up again and again over the last 15 years, and it never goes away completely.”

He noted that in Prince Edward Island, the next election, slated for October 7, 2019 will include a referendum pitting two options against each other.

After twenty years working on the issue, seventeen of them as an MP representing a party that is lukewarm to the idea at best, Scott Reid spent eight months last year travelling the country with a committee of MP’s who were committed to bringing about a change. He then saw the idea tossed aside like a dirty rag two weeks ago.

Yet he still thinks the idea of electoral reform and proportional representation is alive in Canada.

But it may be as hard to predict when that will happen as it was to predict the Liberal complete about-face on the matter that happened two weeks ago.

A series of rallies took place across the country last Saturday opposing the Liberal government’s change of policy.

I’m feeling disheartened and angry about the Liberal decision to abandon their promise of electoral reform. Having rejected the recommendations of an all party task force, the government put out a nonsensical survey to the Canadian public last Fall. Now, while our attention was on the Quebec City massacre and the immigration ban in the U.S., it was revealed last week that there will be no electoral reform under their government. The timing of this announcement, along with the ineptitude of the survey, is suspect. I believe Trudeau never intended to bring about electoral reform, even though he campaigned hard on it this past election. Our electoral system is flawed and needs fixing so that all votes count, and so that many of us voting with our conscience do not end up disenfranchised. This fix is now even more imperative given the recent developments resulting from a flawed system in the United States. The Trudeau government has an opportunity to go down in history as the one that made our electoral system more democratic, but we need to apply pressure in order to hold them to their promise. There are some online petitions going around, including this one began by NDP MP Nathan Cullen in October. It is continuing until March 2. Here is the web address for it: https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-616

Please help by adding your voice in protest of this recent decision, by sending letters to your M.P., and directly to Justin Trudeau, urging them to keep the Liberals to their word; to design a better electoral system for this country. He can be reached by mail at Office of the Prime Minister 80 Wellington Street Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2, by fax at 613-941-6900 or send a message electronically through https://pm.gc.ca/eng/connect

Martina Field

I am profoundly shocked by your government's decision to renege on your commitment to meaningful electoral reform.

Your father and my father, the late Hon. Eugene Forsey, were friends. And so many of us trusted you. When you came to office we had hope. We thought you would respect Canadians' clear desire for an electoral system based on proportional representation – a desire on which the Special Committee found extensive agreement:

"71.5% of respondents either strongly agreed (59.1%) or agreed (12.4%) with the statement “Canada’s electoral system should ensure that the number of seats held by a party in Parliament reflects the proportion of votes it received across the country”:[258] (from the Committee's Report, referring to their online consultation. An even higher percentage of submissions supported some form of proportional representation.)

We thought you were committed to evidence-based policy-making and to listening to Canadians. Abandoning this crucial electoral reform does the opposite on both counts. It is an astonishing betrayal, suggestive of hypocrisy and based on lies.

If you persist in this outrageous decision, you will condemn us not only to the anti-democratic perversity of "first-past-the-post" elections, but to a dangerous hardening of political cynicism even among those of us who still believed in your promise of real change.

I appeal to you to reinstate genuine electoral reform as a major priority of your government, and direct adequate resources to developing a made-in-Canada proportional representation system, based on the fine work already carried out by the Special Committee.

With deep disappointment – but a remaining glimmer of hope,

Helen Forsey

There are a lot of things that could, and have, been written about last week’s revelation that the Trudeau Liberals will not reform the electoral system even though Mr. Trudeau himself repeatedly promised they would before and after his party took power.

But let’s look at what a Liberal MP said.

Mike Bossio was narrowly elected in the new riding of Hastings-Lennox and Addington almost 16 months ago. I don’t know him but from what I’ve and read he is hard working, enthusiastic, and full of zeal to bring about positive change for his constituents. 

Late last week, he published an open letter on the government decision.

He argued that the government should not act on its own to re-write the rules of elections, seeming to favour a more democratic solution, a referendum perhaps, to make that decision.

“There is no consensus on which different electoral system to adopt. For a change of this magnitude, there needs to be much clearer support. If the Liberals, as the majority government, tried to ram through a change of this magnitude with so many competing voices, there would be as much and probably more concern from Canadians.”

Then he argued that allowing the voters to evaluate a proposed system and make the decision through a referendum, would be divisive.

“However, the last thing that Canada needs at this time of international and economic uncertainty is a divisive referendum campaign in Canada pitting us against each other and distracting all of us from what needs to be our top priority – good jobs for Canadians, and growth for the middle class and those working hard to join it.” (Nice pivot to the economy, eh)

If, and this turned out to be too big an if, the higher reaches of the Liberal party has actually been willing to actually work towards seeking a real consensus on a fair system by which members of Parliament are elected, they might have found one. But they did not do so and that is where the lack of political consensus on the matter came from.

Once again we know what we always knew. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives want any part of proportional representation, a system where every vote makes a difference in the outcome. The Liberal and Conservative Parties have traded power in this country for 150 years. They intend to do so for another 150.

Mike Bossio ends his letter by saying, “However, while our electoral system will not be changing in this mandate, this does not mean that there will be no electoral reform” and then goes on to talk about parliamentary reforms, which he knows very well is not electoral reform at all.  And the decision to abandon the project extends beyond “this mandate”. Whether this government lasts 4, 8, or 12 years, it will not reform the electoral system.

I suspect that Mike Bossio, in his more reflective moments, is uncomfortable with the letter he wrote last week.

He should be.

Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington MP Scott Reid, co-chair of the special committee on electoral reform, came to the role as someone uniquely suited to the task. He researched electoral systems for the Reform party in the 1990’s, and sat on a parliamentary committee studying electoral reform in 2004 – 2005.

A year ago, as the special committee was being contemplated, Reid said “I think the government has set itself a difficult timeline” given all the legislative hoops that need to be gone through in order to implement a new voting system. He also began what has become a very public fight with the government over his, and the Conservative Parties’, insistence that in order to change the electoral system the public needs to be formally consulted through a referendum.

At the time Minister of Democratic Reform Maryam Monsef said, “the government is committed to a robust consultation and I will not prejudice the outcome of that process by committing to a referendum.”
Later, Government House Leader Dominic Leblanc went further, saying “our plan is not to have a referendum, our plan is to use parliament to consult Canadians.”

A year later, the special committee that was eventually set up submitted a 300 page report to Parliament.
Among its recommendations are three key ones. The first is that a new system be created on one of the models of proportinal representation, wherein the riding system is modified in some way to ensure that the country-wide popular vote for each is reflected in the number of seats that party has in the legislature. For a party such as the Green Party that receives about 5% of the vote, it would mean they would have about 15 seats among the 338 in the house instead of the 1 seat they currently have. The committee did not provide the precise form of proportional representation, leaving that to the government to determine.

This would give the government a wide set of options as there are many variations of proportional representation systems, some of which do not tie the popular vote to seat count very well.  The committee also recommended that whatever system is proposed must score highly on the Gallagher index, a mathematical model that determines how likely a system is to yield a result in which the number of elected officials from each party corresponds to the popular vote.

The third key recommendation is that the new system be subjected to a straightforward referendum, with two  options, the current system and a proposed new system.

Reid said that one of the ways that he promoted the consensus that was eventually developed came through a letter he wrote to other members of the committee early on in the process. The letter pointed that if members of each of the parties’ on the committee stuck to their basic party policies on electoral reform, a compromise was possible.

“Both the Green’s and the NDP had policies in favour of proportional representation, the Conservative Party policy did not specify a preferred system but insisted on a referendum, and the Liberal Party had a policy that only said a new system needs to be developed and implemented,” he said.

The majority, 72% of people who appeared before the committee and supported change, favoured proportional representation, which was also the favoured option in public consultations

In her response to the committees recommendations, Minister Monsef said she was disappointed that the committee had not been able to do what it had been asked to do, recommend an electoral system. She has since backed down from those comments, but the government has said it is not considering a referendum. Also, if and whether a new system is to be developed and brought to Parliament for consideration by them is up in the air.

Reid told the News on Tuesday that it was clear to the committee when they were finalizing their work that their recommendations would not find favour with the government.

“One of the reasons we did not come to a final detailed proposal was that we knew the more specific we were about the system the more opportunity we would give the government to reject it. We thought that it would be less of a risk to leave the details for them to work out, with the benefit of the detail in our report, which looked critically at a number of options,” he said.

He added that he was not completely surprised by the government response.

He said he was surprised, however by the survey that was launched last week with a postcard campaign to every household in the country and through the website Mydemocracy.ca.

“The Minister said she was disappointed that the committee had not been specific enough, and at the same time they sponsor a survey that asks only very general, background questions. I asked the Minister last week to add questions about our concrete proposals to the survey, but that has not happened.”

The survey has sparked controversy since it was launched, and was the subject of a prickly interview on CBC radios As it Happens between Carol Off and the President of the Company that developed the survey.

See editorial And the Survey said ... (Part 2)

Last week, the governing Liberal Party of Canada received a comprehensive, detailed all party report on electoral reform which presents them with a set of options that they are not willing to undertake, including holding a referendum on electoral reform. In response, their representative to the special committee on electoral reform released a minority report which said that a referendum is not the way to go and that there is not enough time between now and the next election to put a new system in place. Therefore the promise made by Justin Trudeau in the election campaign of 2015,  “if we are elected to form government, this will be the last Canadian election that uses to first past the post electoral system,” cannot be kept.

At the same time, the Minister Responsible for Electoral Reform, Maryam Monsef launched a survey, online and elsewhere, to find out what Canadians think about issues of governance.
I filled it out today. The first bunch of questions makes statements and then asks survey subjects to indicate whether they strongly agree, somewhat agree, are neutral, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree. Later questions make statements and offer yes or no alternatives.

The survey tends to go over the same ground numerous times, which is frustrating. It asks if  eligible voters “should be fined if they do not vote”, and later it asks if “eligible voters should not be forced to vote”. Is this some kind of test to see if we are paying attention? Are they testing the strength of our opinion, or what?

The survey also asks questions that I did not want to answer. For example - “Members of Parliament should reflect the diversity of Canadian society, even if it means putting in place special measures to increase the representation of certain groups.” I don’t think diversity in Parliament, which I wholeheartedly support, should require special measures. What we need is a fair system that removes barriers to participation. If we need “special measures” then we have failed to come up with the best electoral system in the first place. We don’t need tokenism, we need democratic reform.

The survey asks if Canadian’s should have the option to vote online several times. Once it asks is online voting is acceptable even if it makes the voting system less secure, and then it asks if online voting is acceptable even if it makes elections more expensive. It also asks we think online voting would result in an increased turnout.

In fact we have had experience with online voting in this region on a municipal level, and it saves money, and has not resulted in any security issues with the voting system. It also, and this has been a surprise to some, not resulted in an increase in turnout.

In almost all other areas, the survey asks similar questions in different ways. The data analysts who designed it likely have their reasons, but it feels as if we are not being given enough credit for our ability to know our own minds. It feels like a test of our democratic intelligence rather than an opinion survey.

Then, when it is all done, the survey tells us what type we are. We are all either cooperators, guardians, pragmatists, challengers, or Innovators. What this means and why we are being categorized and how this is relevant I do not know, but is comforting that our government has decided to delve into personality types in order to turn consultation into something that feels more and more like a mindless Facebook survey you might fill out to kill time. I will say this, at least they did not assign Lord of the Rings characters to each of the types, but then again that might have been more fun.

The survey also includes an invitation to share results on Twitter and Facebook,  and to “join the conversation online” at #engagedinER or #mydemocracy.

According to the government, the survey has been in the planning stages for several months and has nothing to do with their decision to reject the key recommendations of the committee that they tasked with advising them on how to bring about electoral reform.

However, as MP Scott Reid pointed out, the url Mydemocracy.ca was only purchased on October 24th. It could be that the url was one of the last things that was done in preparation for launching this survey, for this survey, or it could be that the survey is intended to distract attention from the fact that the electoral reform issue has become a loser for the Trudeau government.

It could also be that the government has realised, shortly into their mandate, that a new electoral system is not their safest path to re-election in three year’s time.

I wrote an editorial a few weeks ago that questioned the efficacy of a survey by Frontenac County. The difference between that survey and this one is that while the data gathered by the Frontenac survey may have limited value for a variety of reasons, it was an honest effort at finding out what Frontenac residents think. This electoral survey strikes me as a purely political exercise masquerading as online engagement in the social media age.

Click here to read Part 1