Plenty of interest in electoral reform
Ziggy Eckardt shows the massive ballot which German voters, who have proportional representation, have to fill out. He used it as a show-stopping visual aid at a town hall meeting on electoral reform in Cloverdale on Tuesday night. Eckardt has been active with the Conservative Party in Burnaby.
It was fascinating to attend Cloverdale-Langley City MP John Aldag's town hall on electoral reform Tuesday night.
The timing was questionable. Coming in the midst of the summer, when many people are away on vacation, and one day after a long weekend, it seemed very likely that it would be poorly-attended. Such was not the case. There were at least 130 people there, and several hundred more took part via Periscope and Twitter.
The federal Liberals campaigned last year on changing the way Canadians elect MPs. Justin Trudeau declared that 2015 would be the last time MPs would be elected using the First Past the Post (FPTP) system. He said so when it seemed likely his party would win a minority of seats, at best.
Instead, the lengthy campaign (two and one-half months) and a trend away from the NDP in the final weeks gave his party a comfortable majority of seats with 39.8 per cent of the vote. Nowhere did the Liberals do better and surprise more than in the Lower Mainland, where the Liberals have held very few seats.
Aldag's seat was expected to be an easy win for the Conservatives, but that didn't happen. The Liberals took all but one of the seats in Surrey, except for Dianne Watts' riding of South Surrey-White Rock.
The easiest thing for Trudeau to do would have been to jettison the electoral reform pledge, seeing as the FPTP system hugely benefited his party. However, he seems to want to follow through on this commitment, and the town halls are part of what he has asked Liberal MPs to do - gather feedback.
Aldag is one of five Liberal MPs on a parliamentary committee that is looking into electoral reform.
There were several themes that I noticed at the meeting. One is that most longtime voters are very reluctant to change the current system, and also want a referendum if any change is proposed.
While some of those who spoke from that perspective are clearly Conservatives, the insistence on a referendum crosses party lines.
Another is that younger voters believe the current system needs to be changed. One articulate young man bemoaned the fact that he has to vote for someone who is not his first choice, in order to have any chance to vote for a winning candidate. Others indicated they want to see more parties and viewpoints in the House of Commons, favouring some type of proportional representation.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University professor Greg Millard went over the pros and cons of various systems, and noted that a mixed member proportional representation system would likely mean few or no majority governments in the future.
One speaker brought an outstanding visual to the event - the massive ballot which is filled out by German voters, who have proportional representation. The size of the ballot alone would discourage voter participation, in my opinion. We already see this in municipal elections, where voters have to select more than one candidate. In Surrey, they vote for the mayor, eight councillors and six school trustees, and the challenging process of choosing who to vote for does discourage participation.
A much more complicated way of voting in federal elections would also discourage participation.
Former BC Liberal MLA Dave Hayer made some interesting points. One is that voters do correct earlier mistakes at the first opportunity, and know how to use the FPTP system to do so. I have long believed this and have seen it happen many times.
Hayer used the 2005 B.C. election as an example. In 2001, the BC Liberals won 77 of 79 seats with 58 per cent of the vote. In the next election, there were 34 opposition MLAs elected. Voters saw clearly that the BC Liberals needed tough opposition in the B.C. legislature. As Hayer said, our democracy works best with strong opposition.
It could be argued that Canadian voters collectively did the same thing in the 2015 federal election, correcting the 2011 results where they gave Conservative Stephen Harper a majority in 2011. Harper had governed with a minority for five years, and his legislation and actions could not stray too far without the likelihood of a defeat in the House of Commons. He seemed to throw off the shackles too readily after winning a majority, and voters said "no more."
Personally, I'm not opposed to changing the system to some sort of transferable ballot, as was used in B.C. in 1952 and 1953 to first elect W.A.C. Bennett as premier. Bennett went on to be B.C.'s most successful premier, winning seven elections and staying in power for 20 years. He also did more to modernize and change the province than any premier, before or since.
I have doubts about proportional representation. I believe it gives too much power to political parties, who are already unaccountable to most people and will always do anything they can to "game" the system. PR means that some MPs will be elected off party lists, and will not represent ridings or be directly accountable to any voters.
If there was the possibility to recall MPs, particularly those from party lists, PR might be slightly more acceptable.
I do believe there needs to be a referendum on any proposed changes to the electoral system.
Hayer told me after the meeting that if the Liberals change the system unilaterally, by a vote in Parliament, they will likely win the next election, but then lose the one afterwards. He predicted voters will take revenge on them for making unnecessary changes to the most fundamental way that citizens participate in government - voting.
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