I just wanted to mention one thing to be considered in regards to your comment that ‘each party will run five candidates.’ This is not entirely true; sure there will be certain ridings when some parties will run the number of candidates as are available seats in that riding, however:

- most parties allocate budgets to each candidate for campaigning in an election; these budgets fluctuate depending on which riding they are looking at
- in order for a single party to run five candidates, they are committing to spending that budget times five. There will be many occasions where a party will not be able to afford to run a full slate of candidates per riding, or will choose that it is not beneficial.
- what this means is that if party A runs five candidates (in the hopes of winning all of the available seats), the voters in that riding who are “party loyal” (say 50,000) have to split the vote amongst those candidates (in preference of course)
- if party B who is slightly less popular in that riding and maybe sets a smaller budget, therefore running only two candidates – they are likely to be able to count on their loyal voters (30,000) voting for those two candidates.
Over-saturating the riding with a full slate in an effort to win each seat may result in splitting those votes amongst their loyal voters, while the underdog can campaign solidly with a couple of candidates. In my example, you might see the party A candidates receiving 10,000 votes each, while party B candidates each get 15,000 votes thus winning two of the five seats.

I hope that makes sense.

Also I was obviously misrepresenting our system by suggesting that Canadians had voted for their Prime Minister in a Presidential election style contest – also being hypocritical as, during the last Ontario election, I chastised an acquaintance for his error in saying he was going to vote for John Tory (Conservative Party Leader), as we were not residents of Tory’s Don Valley West riding.

But let’s face reality, many Canadians do think that the federal election is a referendum on party leaders (see the Liberals last election results). Although these people are not correct, perhaps they should be.

Why don’t we have a separate, presidential-type election for the executive branch? Stephen Harper appears to me as a viable candidate that I would consider voting for. In my ultra-non-Conservative Toronto riding, the Conservative party runs bottom-of-the-barrel, farcical lunatics, obviously with no expectation of success. If I want Stephen Harper to be my Prime Minister, I have no way of voting that opinion.

This arrangement made more sense when real executive power was in the hands of the most undemocratic of institutions, the monarch. Now that the Queen’s role is a nugatory one, does it not make sense that all Canadians get somewhat of a say in who runs our government?

Thanks for your article. Unfortunately, it’s just … too late.

I’d like to scream, to yell to each of my fellow British Columbians : “WAKE UP ! YOU’VE BEEN RAPED !”.

How did that happen ?

Well, first of all, there was no need for a referendum. Voting system got changed in 1952 and 1953 in BC without the need for a referendum. Also, in 1991, BC saw its last multi-member riding disappear – again, with no input from the public.

Gordon Campbell got elected in 2001 on the promise to fix that broken electoral system that costed him the victory in 1996. But eh, you don’t saw the branch on which you’re sitting. The Citizens’ Assembly was a great political feat. However, their propsal meant utter disaster : no more unchecked majority government ! Yes, that’s right : it’s been more than 56 years that we have majority governments, where opposition can do nothing but whine in the microphone. All but one had less than 50 of the votes. Read that last sentence again. Now ponder what it means : for more than 56 years, a majority of the people had near zero power ; “minority rules” has almost always been the norm.

Gordon Campbell had the power to legislate the change recommended at arm’s length. Heck ! 77 seats out of 79 – who would oppose him ? But why shoot himself in the foot ? So he sidestepped the proposal, and called for a referendum. But while 50% is enough for BC to leave Canada, he legislated that this one referendum needed 60% of approval to be binding.

And then came the surprise : the 2005 referendum obtained 57.7% of the votes – more than the BC Liberals obtained for their last landslide victory in 2001, when they certainly did not feel rejected. Yet, Gordon Campbell understood that the people of BC had decided to stay with FPTP.

To calm the crowds, the BC Liberals decided to “give it another chance” 4 years later. This next referendum would be equitably funded – the pros and cons would receive the same support from the Government. This time, however, Elections BC, would not educate the citizens. What an odd decision !?

In 2005, Elections BC had spent 1 million dollars to advertise and impartially educate British Columbians on the referendum. As a comparison, the BC Liberal party spent 10 million dollars on electoral expenses.

The ratio of approval per dollar spent was overwhelmingly in favor of STV, especially when considering that a poll conducted shortly after the referendum found out that most of the people who voted “No” did so because they had not been properly informed.

Was it because this very little impartial information yielded so much support that the majority BC Liberal Government (elected with only 46% of the votes) decided to revoke it ?

Anyhow, this time, while maintaining the threshold set for the referendum at 60%, the BC Liberals legislated that two opposing partisan sides would be responsible for educating the public of the pros and cons of the proposed change – each of which would receive half of that same 1 million dollar budget expanded in 2005.

The BC Liberals, who ran in 2001 on the pledge of fixing a broken system, would be forced to remain silent on the issue. The NDP, whose only recent victory was a false majority allowed by that same broken system, followed suit.

The BC Liberals ruled that the “No” side would be a very well introduced organization of political insiders, professional columnists and pundits. In contrast, the “Yes” side would be an amateurish society of volunteers. The budgets would be granted in February, 3 short months before the referendum.

While Elections BC was requested to be impartial and factual, neither of the “Yes” and “No” sides were required to be objective or ernest.

In fact, the very effective “No” side inundated the press with fear-and-loathe tactics, calling STV a “scheme”, a “scam” or a “con” ; disparaged the Citizens’ Assembly ; spread false rumors on the robustness of the system – basically saying it was not working anywhere ; insisting that the results would spell doom and chaos over BC, and that the politicians would go amok, unchecked and unaccountable.

While they were doing so, and mostly for free in most BC newspapers, the amateurish “Yes” side scrambled to build a last-minute grassroots campaign, picturing silly super-heroes, and relying on letters to the editor to react to the smears of the “No” side.

Surprizingly, the public’s answer was a massive, uninformed “No”. That is, only for about 50 percent of the citizens. The other half of them did not even bother to cast a vote.

While canvassing for the “Yes” side, I was surprized to see how few citizens had even noticed a referendum was imminent, and how many of those had already made up their mind on the sole advise of the press. No question, whatsoever : if it’s in the newspaper, it must be true. “You are a con artist, and I will do everything I can to prevent you from sabotaging our world’s finest democracy” – that sentence was all too often readable in people’s sneers. Our signs were trashed, and we were given fingers.

Now the referendum is over, and we are called “losers”. In this country, we don’t grant losers any representation. That is the way our democracy works.

Benoit
North Vancouver

However, with respect to point #4, Less than 1% of voters (only voters in their two constituencies ) voted for Harper or Dion. Harper had the support of Conservative MPs representing 38% of voters, and Dion had the support of a greater number of Liberal, NDP and Bloc MPs representing over 50% of voters. This sort of coalition happens frequently in other parliamentary democracies, especially those with more proportional electoral systems, and there is nothing undemocratic or illegal about it.

With respect to point #2, don’t forget that the Senate is also horrendously unbalanced, with provinces like New Brunswick and Newfoundland over-represented relative to Alberta and B.C. by a nearly 10-1 margin! N.B. has well under one quarter of B.C.’s population, with almost twice as many senators.

It is true that I have a lot to learn about Canadian Government – I went to school in Ontario, so the only introduction I ever got to Civics was at a Honda dealership. That notwithstanding, there appear to me to be some very odd facts about Canadian “democracy”, some of which I will present to you now.

1. The Canadian Head of State is an octogenarian hereditary monarch and religious leader, Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Queen of Canada’s duties are tended to here by her appointed vice-regal representative, the Governor General of Canada, who is also the Commander-in-chief of the Canadian military. Before any bill in Canada becomes a law, the GG must grant her Royal Assent.

By the way, psychologists have a clinical term for people who act with reverence toward grotesquely garbed, geriatric mountebanks who act as figure-heads for the most archaic and anachronistic institutions – they’re called Catholics.

2. The Senate of Canada is a body entirely appointed by the Governor General. It is restricted to those who own property.

3. The Governor of the Bank of Canada is appointed by the bank’s board of directors. He or she directs monetary policy independent of the government.

To refresh your memory, it was Baron M.A. Rothschild who said, “Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.”

4. Last year, numerous protesters throughout the country wanted the GG to remove Stephen Harper from the Prime-Minister’s Office on the logic that sixty-two percent of voters did not vote for him. The man whom they felt did deserve to be Prime-Minster was Stephane Dion, whom seventy-four percent of Canadian voters did not vote for.

5. This year, the Province of Alberta ran a deficit despite the fact that government deficits are illegal by Alberta Law.

I leave it for you to decide what name befits a government that operates outside the law.

6. In Ontario, when Dalton McGuilty first ran for Premier he promised not to raise taxes (although, to be fair, he didn’t ask us to read his lips). He won, raised taxes, and got elected the next time.

In Canada we love to extol the virtues of democracy, but we are loathe to participate in a discussion of what a democracy really is. This is not democracy, it’s hypocrisy.

Inasmuch as a democracy represents the “will of the people” – we don’t have it. What we do have is a hodge-podge of appointed aristocrats, inherited monarchs, and elected oligarchs.

Is it not time to devise a system of government that makes, at very least, a modicum of sense?

Start by giving the voters the power to recall non-performing MPPs and calling for a local by-election. That’s something that would really put the ball in the voters’ court.

And I think the NDP shares some of the blame. They should have really championed STV as a central part of their platform. If every Green and NDP vote were also a vote for STV, maybe we wouldn’t have another four years of Gordo’s raping and pillaging.

Hopefully a more visionary province will take the lead because we blew it!

The reason I am skeptical is because I see the fundamental problem with politics not as one of supply, but as one of demand.

People fill out ballots as if they are playing Pro-Line (sports gambling). I actually know people who have, on the day following an election, celebrated being “right” – that is, correctly predicting the winner.

Obviously, with this mentality, no electoral system has any hope of fixing or improving Canadian politics.

However, one suggestion I have is that instead of a list of candidates and/or parties from which to choose on a ballot, voters are simply provided a blank piece of paper on which each is to write the name of his or her desired candidate. This way a voter is forced to know at least one thing about at least one candidate (even if its just the name).

1 Conservative
3 Liberal
4 New Democrat
2 Green

You would rank your favorite candidate as the 1st choice and then pick your second, third, and fourth choice. Once that is done the votes are tallied up.

If a majority is not the result from the 1st choices given, then the last candidate is dropped and all the second choices are redistributed to the remaining candidates. This would go on until a candidate has the support of 50%+1.

Instead of advocating a largely complicated form of electoral reform, why not go with something simple. Instant Run Voting is much simpler and I’m certain more people would support is as it ensures each vote isn’t “wasted” and also allows for a wider range of candidates. Not to mention the fact you still maintain a good level of local representation.

Opposition only works if there exists an opposing view, excluding of course the opposition for opposition’s sake tactic of Jack-be-not-so-nimble Layton – I will vote against it whatever it is.

Any debate or criticism in the House of Commons is over efficacy, not ideology.

For example, some opposition member will state that the Government failed to deliver X dollars to Y project. It is never argued that Y project should not be funded by Government at all.

All Governments in Canada need not just a down-sizing in shape, but also a down-sizing in scope.

Under STV, a party (e.g. the Greens) could STILL get about 15% of (first choice) votes province-wide and not win a single seat, if they had 32% in all the rural ridings and 14% in the urban ones with no secondary vote support. STV is mathematically likely to produce results that are closer to proportionality than those of the current system, but it is absolutely not a truly proportional system itself. It’s more of a proportional/FPTP hybrid.

I’m still skeptical that the electoral system will do anything in and of itself to free MPs from central control and command structures. They already have the sheer numbers necessary to enact many of the reform initiatives they have identified for themselves in order to have a greater impact on public policy. Why haven’t they?

I’m not certain they feel in their heart of hearts that they have any kind of mandate independent of their party’s. Regardless of the voting system, if it still demonstrably depends on the strength of your party brand and your leader for you to get elected, and if your selection process as a candidate has no way of giving you a policy mandate independnet of your leader’ – and I ask again, should it? – then they remain votes in the hands of leadership.

Actually, I think this STV thing will ineluctably metamorphose into some sort of PR system as people generally find it easier and more comfortable to align with a tribe than a person. For example, a voter will find it needlessly onerous to decide the preferable between Liberal One and Liberal Two (after all, they’re both Liberals!) and conclude by thinking – would it not be easier just to rank the parties?

Canadian Federal Elections are already far too much like referendums on the party leaders. Any electoral reforms aimed at granting easier access to more parties also necessitates increased emphasis on party brands in campaigning strategies to the further diminution (if it’s not already tasting magma) of individual characters with individual ideas.

The great myth is that Canadian politics suffer from having too few parties, the truth is that one is too many.

A political party is a group of individuals convening and coalescing to share one political philosophy or opinion. Now, outside of politics, having one opinion is the domain of one person. So, to conclude, a political party is hundreds or thousands of people doing the work of one person – in Toronto we call this a City Employee.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the economy is slumped over the toilet experiencing the ugly side of the boom-bust cycle. If ever there was a time to start cutting out excesses – it’s now.

According to Wikipedia, the Canadian Hansard is “guided by the principle of avoiding ‘repetitions, redundancies and obvious errors’”.

“Repetitions, redundancies and obvious errors” pretty much sums up Canadian politics. The House of Commons doesn’t need a little reshuffling, it needs aggressive down-sizing.

I know what you’re thinking, how will we know who is Prime Minister if there are no parties from which to determine a majority of support?

Well, we can solve this problem the same way we solve other problems in this modern “democracy” – have the appointed vice-regal representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom, and head of the Church of England, appoint someone.

Is Stephane Dion available?

If the winning candidate got 40% of the vote when they only needed 20%, the half of the vote they needed is “parked” and the other half is transferred on to other candidates as per the preferences on those ballots. That ensures that the power and influence of the voters who backed that candidate isn’t diminished just because they wound up choosing Mr. Popular.

In my view, that is a legitimate goal, but one that would require a move to what Arend Lijphart calls “consensus democracy”, which he associates with proportional representation systems like STV.

So in your example of a Calgary 7-seat riding, you’d like see the Conservatives running 5-6 candidates and the other parties (which would surely include a option to the right of the Conservatives to provide even more voter choice) running no more than 2 (unless they felt a surge of popularity might allow them to win 3.