With the start of the Quebec election this Sunday, we get to see democracy in action in the province. Officially, this is the time where politicians will try to win our votes and sell their parties to us. It’s the time when every eligible voter has their say on who represents them.
Officially at least.
If anything, the official start of the election is only another piece of theatre that riddles our outdated electoral system.
Politicians across Quebec have been in campaign mode for the last couple of months. Bills haven’t been introduced in the National Assembly since June. The October 3 election day has been known since 2018. Sure, now we can expect to see more political advertising, but that doesn’t change the fact the campaign has been going on for months now.
The official start date is just one example of part of the democratic process that no longer really serves a purpose. We just keep doing it out of a sense of inertia. Why the media and parties still seem to put up with the charade is anyone’s guess.
Back in the 1800s when our democratic system of government began taking its final form, the official start of the election was actually adhered to, now not so much. The permanent campaigns of the modern age had yet to be invented.
This ritual is just one of the anachronisms that currently determines how we govern ourselves, but it’s a comparatively minor one.
Probably the worst offender in this regard is the electoral system we use to elect our MNAs (and MPs at the federal level), first-past-the-post (FPTP).
Under FPTP, all a politician needs to do is win the most votes in a riding to be elected the representative.
This system creates a number of problems. The first is that the party that wins the election often has more seats than is merited by the proportion of the popular vote they’ve won. The idea that “majority governments” often do not receive a majority of support seems to be a contradiction that isn’t pointed out enough.
And on a riding-by-riding basis, anyone who didn’t vote for the winner goes unrepresented, which is often more than 50 per cent riding (though to be fair, typically in the Pontiac the winner receives more than 50 per cent of the vote).
Often smaller parties have no chance to win any seats, despite earning a significant amount of popular support. All this really strains the definition of democracy.
Back in 2018, the CAQ promised they would consult and eventually hold a referendum on whether to replace FPTP in Quebec with a proportional vote. This proposed system would ensure that areas keep local representation, yet also include a mechanism that makes it so parties get seats that reflect the support they won at the provincial level, also known as mixed-member-proportional. The referendum was supposed to be held on election day, October 3, 2022, yet in the tradition of Canadian politicians, the promises of electoral reform got dropped as soon as the party that promised it was securely in power.
There is a lot of talk and worry about the erosion of democracy in Canada and around the world. Yet no one seems to be willing to do anything about it beyond playing whack-a-mole with misinformation and disinformation on Facebook. Maybe if people in charge were actually interested in saving democracy, they could start by improving and expanding it. Our democratic system was definitely an upgrade on the feudalism it replaced, but it’s over 150 years old now.
Other countries such as New Zealand, Germany, The Netherlands and Norway, to name a few, have figured out better ways of determining who governs them. You can go read about them. They generally lead to better outcomes for average people. The non-profit and non-partisan organization Fair Vote Canada is a great resource to learn about how much better we could be doing.
Let’s get with the times and start seriously thinking about electoral reform.
It’s past time we start updating the way we govern ourselves. It’s 2022 but we’re still acting like it’s 1867.
Brett Thoms
