Following Justin Trudeau’s recent resignation speech, a reporter asked him if he had any regrets. There could have been any number of answers to that question. His response? The prime minister wistfully cited his failure to reform the electoral system, which he had promised to do in the 2015 election.
But Trudeau’s failure to deliver on this election promise does not mean the issue is dead. A recent EKOS opinion poll found that 68 per cent of Canadians would support moving to a system of proportional representation. And there are good reasons why we should.
In Canada, about three-quarters of the population is eligible to vote, of which about two-thirds actually bothers to cast a ballot. The support of about a third of those put the Liberals in power in the last two federal elections, despite more votes going to the Conservatives in both cases.
Similarly, in the 2021 election, the NDP received twice as many votes as the Bloc but scored eight fewer seats. The Greens, with almost as much support as the Bloc, ended up with only two seats compared to the Bloc’s 32. And the PPC, with more than twice the support of the Greens, got no seats at all.
This is the sleight-of-hand of our first-past-the-post system. But what effect does it have on how we cast our votes?
When even majority governments can be formed with just a third of the vote. When the distribution of seats in the House can be so completely out of whack with the support garnered by each party. When the fear of wasting votes on smaller parties has the perverse effect of making people vote strategically instead of for their preferred candidate. Is it any wonder that there is such low voter turnout for elections, putting the fate of the nation in the hands of so few?
Under proportional representation, smaller parties would do better. The percentage of the vote they receive would translate into a corresponding proportion of the seats in the House. We would recognize that our votes really count. Voters could vote their conscience and the result would be a more pluralistic composition of the federal legislature, enabling this most important of our democratic institutions to become more representative of our diverse population, a crucial distinguishing characteristic of our country at a time when celebrating what distinguishes Canada has never been more important.
Parties would be less likely to win clear majorities, meaning they would have to work with each other to find common ground on which to form policy. This would have a stabilizing effect on the country’s policy trajectory, preventing any single government from striking out too radically from the mainstream, from undoing the gains of predecessor governments. There would be fewer wild reversals of direction of the sort we are witnessing in the US. Proportional representation would promote greater policy coherence over the years as the country’s representatives in Ottawa pursue a path on which a majority of them can agree. And, as it would favour politicians with skills at working productively together, there might even be a more civil, respectful discourse along the way.
Who knows, fostering more collaborative governance might just serve to inoculate Canadian politics from the climate of increasing polarization, hostility and dysfunction that is unfolding elsewhere and appears to have some prospect of gaining a foothold here.
Our outgoing PM might have a few thoughts on this. Let’s hope our incoming leaders do as well.
Charles Dickson
