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Tom Monto

1921 Hunt's report seen as attack on public officials when he targeted the electoral system

Updated: Jan 31

Edmonton Journal, March 24, 1921


1921 in the Legislature

Premier Stewart rejected newspaper reports that he had made a promise in 1919 that his government would give PR to Alberta. The promise was reported to have been made during a a campaign event at Dog Pound, Alberta during a by-election contest. Stewart said in 1921 that he recalled a heated exchange with hecklers at the 1919 meeting but no such promise.


Speaking in 1921, as an election was approaching, he said that Alberta and Canada were well governed, that there was no need for PR.


He said the UFA leaders were not demanding PR in rural ridings, that no one was saying that PR was necessary in rural ridings.


The Legislature formed a committee to investigate PR. But Stewart pointed out that the committee, being reflective of the view of the Legislature, was set against PR.

John D. Hunt, Clerk of the Legislative Council had been asked to investigate electoral reform.

The report had been submitted but Stewart said much of it was not on PR but instead was an attack on integrity of men in public office.


(info from Edmonton Journal, March 24, 1921


Impassioned calls for reform inundated his office.


The only action taken by the Stewart government was to group the districts in Edmonton and Calgary into two multi-member districts and then to give each voter as many votes as there were seats in a district (five).


This Block Voting allowed Liberal voters in Edmonton to take all the seats, leaving none to other parties.


The representation elected in Calgary was mixed (not belonging to just one party). This was likely the due to the members of the single largest group spreading its votes across different labels, itself showing acquired sophistication due to the use of PR-STV in city elections. The mixed Calgary result shows how multi-member districts, even without a guaranteed-fair voting system voting system, can produce mixed representation that reflects the votes cast by a majority of voters. A high proportion of Calgary voters likely could look to the MLAs elected in Calgary in 1921 and see MLAs they were happy with. Judging by votes cast, the Calgary result was much fairer a result. The votes of a large proportion of Calgarians, much more than in Edmonton, were represented by those elected. In Edmonton, only a minority of the votes were cast for Liberal candidates although Liberals were the only ones elected.


[I can find no surviving copies of Hunt's report.* But perhaps Hunt had to point out failings of those elected under the old system in order to underline the need for change to a more fair system. It is natural to show fault with a system through finding fault with the important personages of the day elected by the system.


It could even be said that the blame for the policies of the government -- inhumane treatment of Aboriginal families, for example -- can be placed on the system itself. Would Aboriginal families have been so ill-treated if they had had fair representation in the country's legislatures or if Aboriginal adults had had the vote?


"Treaty Indians" could not vote in federal elections prior to 1960; they could not vote in Alberta elections prior to 1967. 1967 was about the time the Catholic Church stopped operating the Kamloops Indian Residential School where 215 bodies in un-marked graves have recently been found. Although there was no direct connection -- Kamloops is in BC where "Treaty Indians" got the vote in 1949.


But the 1960s was a time of changing attitudes in many ways, as the present era is as well.]


(info from Edmonton Journal, March 24, 1921


Thanks for reading.

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*Provincial Archives of Alberta has a few files concerning John D. Hunt:

PR1969.0289/194      1-600-31

PR1994.172 file 178

1971.138 file 126


John D. Hunt The Dawn of a New Patriotism (1918)


also author of Democracy in Canada (a chapter in The Dawn... but printed as separate monograph as well)


John D. Hunt was clerk of the executive council of Alberta in the 1920s and was the force behind Alberta adopting STV-PR in 1924. (Of course the government in power at the time - the United Farmers of Alberta - played an important part as well.) (Actually Alberta adopted a hybrid STV/IRV system. In 1926 Alberta was the first legislature in North America to hold an election where all its members were elected using non-plurality methods - the proportional STV or the majoritarian Instant-Runoff Voting system.)


His booklet A Key to P.R. (1924) is accessible in Peel's PP website and also reproduced in the book A Report on Alberta Elections.

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