Fair Vote Canada 20th Anniversary Conference
"Proportional Representation Lessons learned and looking ahead"
panel discussion, June 4, 2021
featuring Andrew Coyne, Elizabeth May, Judy Rebick and Hugh Segal.
"On the 20th anniversary of Fair Vote Canada, our guests will reflect on why PR matters more than ever and lessons learned from decades of advocacy"
(youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7qh5JqQtGw)
Following is an abridged transcript of the statements made.
Introductory remarks by Anita Nickerson, the moderator.
Fair Vote Canada is the non-partisan, non-profit citizen-led campaign for proportional representation. now celebrating 20 years in operation.
She said she would have preferred to be celebrating having gotten PR 20 years ago but whatever...
a lot of lessons and building have happened over that time so we have a lot to be proud of...
Andrew Coyne:
Some referendums did show majority in favour of change
2005 BC referendum 58 percent
PEI 2016 referendum 52 percent not considered binding
But the result was ignored by governments.
in other cases no change was made despite promise:
federal Liberal and Quebec CAQ elected on promise of change but then once in power they decided the system was fine as is.
Our present system is based on idea that minority rule is wrong. We see this when a majority of those in the legislature is required for passage of a law.
But a majority in legislature does not reflect majority of the people so, overall, minority rule is possible.
Canada is sole country in world to use only FPTP at all levels of legislatures (provincial and federal). [Monto: FPTP and Block Voting is used in most city elections, with Alternative Voting used in the last London, Ontario city election.]
[Monto: UK voters vote under variety of systems in their national and local elections (Block Voting, FPTP, Supplemental Voting, MMP in London) as well as the Additional Member system (regionalized MMP) for the Scottish Parliament, and STV in North Ireland Assembly and local elections, and in Scottish local elections.
Most US voters use FPTP but some use Alternative Voting (Instant Runoff Voting) in federal elections.]
PR can appear just as statistical jiggery-pokery but you can build an understanding of the need for PR from the riding up.
it takes bit of lateral thinking to understand that you can have system where there is not just one rep from a district.
fundamental difference between PR and FPTP is that in FPTP you have one rep from a riding and PR gives you several.
if you have several, then you don't have to give all the representation to one party, you can share out the rep based on the share of the vote in the riding.
building proportionality in the aggregate from establishing proportionality at the riding level. that is something people get more readily than going at it just from the aggregate.
(11:40) PR in the aggregate would be natural product of proportionality at the riding level.
Last point that he wanted to say is that people who are most dogged in defence of FPTP merely say that that is how the system works, that electing one person in a riding is the only way politics works, that any other way is some impossible thing, is just something or sore losers.
It becomes circular - they assume those who fail in FPTP are losers and therefore any alternative must be for losers if you take that as an assumption.
But if you point out that FPTP is not only way to form parliamentary system, that it is not the only way to have local representation, then those who fail to be elected under FPTP are not losers.
[14:25] Anita
[stressed Andrew's point about PR starting at riding level and working up.]Get people to think how it would be if they had someone representing their views, how it would be if they had a team representing their district [their city].
[14:45] Anita introduced Elizabeth May, Green MP, former party leader, author, Order of Canada, etc.
[15:20] Elizabeth May:
under winner-take-all FPTP, wedge issues are emphasized
political process depends on no consensus in past and no consensus in future
to have co-operative government, government where parties work together and work together well, you must get past FPTP.
under COVID countries that had women leaders and but also countries that had some form of PR dealt with the crisis the best.
political culture under FPTP produces different type of politician than PR
under FPTP, parties that are most similar threaten each other the most.
in NZ the green and the Labour interact quite differently than the Greens and the NDP in Canada.
2016 Labour went to polls saying it would co-operate with Greens after the election,
but in FPTP a party leader would be pillories for promising that kind of cooperation,\
May said she was pilloried for saying just that in 2008 [when NDP and Greens put forward their claim that that they together had more right to government than less-popular minority Conservatives. The right of a single party to govern was thought to be more important than representation of the most number of voters.]
FPTP punishes co-operation, promotes conflict and toxicity in how we treat each other in the political world.
[Monto: here is a source of info on NZ: Voters' victory? : New Zealand's first election under proportional representation by Jack Vowles (1950), available from the Alberta Legislative Library]
Judy Rebick
(Judy Rebick is a journalist, political activist and feminist. Judy is the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women,...)
[22:00] Rebick notes that 20th anniversary of Charlotteotown Accord referendum came and went with no notice.
Why? because elites across Canada lost
it was the only federal referendum in her lifetime.
[there have only been three in history of Canada --
there was also one on Prohibition in 1890s and one during WWII on conscription.]
[29:00] campaign for Alberta referendum on 3-E Senate
Reform and NAC worked together for PR-elected Senate
but premiers met behind closed doors at Charlottetown. they got rid of idea of elected Senate.
gender parity was endorsed by some but nothing happened.
so she noticed that PR is the kind of thing where the right and left can unite.
Why have we not achieved it?
not only because people in power don't want it but also the kind of people who support it are geeky - tend to get into debates on details and get into debates on this system versus that system versus another system...
she herself does think that MMP is best system for Canada but wants to work with anybody who wants any kind of PR system.
Dave Meslin has been doing great work with ranked ballots.
fabulous booklet that Dave just published "London Leads" (available online)
A Black woman was elected in the London Ontario city election under ranked voting (an obvious reference to Arielle Kayabaga), who would not have been elected any other way.
[34:00]
Irrespective of this, ranked ballots or party-list or any kind of fair vote should be encouraged, as we all agree that any kind of fairer vote is better than what we have now.
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[35:00] Anita (the moderator) agreed that uniting behind any move toward PR was the strategy of the Fair Vote Canada group. any proportional improvement is a win for us.
She did though say that Fair Vote Canada was not supportive of majoritarian systems (exactly the kind of system used in London).
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London Ontario AV election in 2018
[MONTO: Here's a bit of discussion of the London Ontario AV election in 2018.
In every ward and in the mayor's contest, the candidate who lead in the first count was elected every time. So the winner would have been the same if the election had been conducted using FPTP (assuming that voters would have voted the same).
Perhaps Rebick was assuming that many voters might have assumed that Kayabaga would had little chance and she would not have received the votes that she in fact did under Alternative Voting, where voters were prepared to take a chance knowing that their votes might be transferred to another candidate later instead of being wasted, as is always the case for votes cast for less-popular candidates under FPTP. (Later in the panel discussion Rebick does say this same thing herself.]
See another blog for more analysis of the London election.
link: https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/2018-london-ontario-city-election-used-alternative-voting
----------- end of my discussion of the London, Ontario 2018 election ---------------------
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Returning to the Fair Vote Canada panel discussion:
[37:00] Hugh Segal
(Segal is a former Conservative senator, author and political strategist.)
Segal noted a connection between electoral system and trust in the government that ultimately gets chosen.
hypocrisy of party leadership. They are chosen through ranked ballots but parties oppose using ranked ballots for election of legislators
Three governments that have done very well addressing COVID are NZ, Germany and Taiwan. Each uses PR.
Israel is held up as example of where PR does not work but that country dealt very effectively with COVID.
under FPTP often a single-party government is manufactured, despite the will of the voters. perhaps with the votes of just 10 percent of the eligible voters. this does not produce much trust in government.
such would be the case if the government was reflective of many views, made up of members of more lthan jsut one party.
low-consensus results means high number of wasted votes.
MPs sometimes being elected with 29 percent of the vote in the riding meaning that majority cast votes opposed to the elected MP.
FPTP is an obstacle to democracy when voters want to be inspired, want to be open-minded, who want cases based on evidence, on facts, on science, and want a mix of parties of different ideologies in a governing coalition.
[43:16] Despised Ontario government for denying right of Ontario cities to adopt PR.
virtue of federation is that province can do different things and then the rest of the country can learn from that.
Tommy Douglas and public healthcare for example.
today social friction
heightened by social media and deepening ideology animosity, exacerbated by those who want to see it deepen
now in Canada today there is gap between what needs to be happening and what is happening and FPTP will not get us to where this gap will be addressed.
"It is important to keep up the fight ... and continue making the case."
The way to make the case is to ask this question of our fellow citizens
would you trust a government that has just one party or wold you trust a government that has different political parties within it so that there is compromise and co-operation when decisions are being made?
The vast majority of Canadians would choose the second option."
We need to put this case until we have a government that is committed to breaking out of its own self-interest.. to inspire to move toward something that is in the public interest, which is really what PR is.
Anita (the moderator):
noted how Segal presented a well-practiced analysis.
Through repetition of discussion, we all internalize the reasons why FPTP is so flawed.
She liked Segal's use of term "low-consensus result" such as when Liberals won government [albeit minority government] in 2019 with 33 percent o the vote and Trudeau said on election night that he had been elected with strong mandate.
[48:00] Elizabeth May:
during the PR committee work, a postcard was sent out to Canadians asking if they would prefer strong government making decisions or a lot of small parties working together. Most people said they wanted the many parties working together. it was their own poll and they completely ignored it.
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Anita went to questions that were sent in in advance.
How do you get PR at the federal level?
Judy Rebick
she admitted she has not been really engaged in PR, not since she stopped being leader of NAC [National Action Committee on Status of Women]
PR is not the kind of issue that grabs you on daily basis unless you are a MP.
and the debate is more between MMP people versus STV people than about PR.
we need a communication plan that will make it really mean something to people,
then we have problem of them being elected then not doing it.
I have always astonished at how much sincerity Trudeau can pretend to have -- it just blows my mind.
The pamphlet "London Leads" pushes for majority rule, for satisfaction of majority, not just plurality.
[ice cream preferred by majority but they are stuck eating pickled beets]
We need to popularize the discussion far more than we are and make people realize how important the discussion is.
FPTP reinforces the worse behaviours of electoral politics.
How did New Zealand get PR?
Elizabeth May:
They had two elections in a row with wrong-winner results.
We need a situation where even the leading parties start to think that this system is so perverse that we must change it, instead of their normal viewpoint that eventually they will get the unfair rewards that others are experiencing.
if a party says we would have had government if not for FPTP, then that creates push for change.
[Monto: the Conservatives face that now but that is softened by fact that in 86 percent of the country the Liberal have more votes, and by fact that under PR Liberals and NDP and Greens working together will keep Conservatives out of power anyway.]
New Zealand had royal commission, meetings held across the country, then two different referendum
We need to constantly remind people that that result you don't like, well, it would not have happened if we did not have FPTP.
Regionalism
the present government can have no Alberta MPs in cabinet because there are no elected Liberals in Alberta. Liberal votes, yes, but no MPs.
We would do better job holding country together if we have MPs of each party elected in each region. [Monto: that was intent of my "province-based MMP system", that I shared in blog recently.]]
Hugh Segal:
[55:40] MPs should be asked by what authority do you have government when a majority of voters voted against you, without some broad consultation beyond your narrow little party?
We need to continue to expose the failings of FPTP.
Strategic voting
[1:03:30] Elizabeth May:
people objected to her running in 2011 saying she would steal votes from the NDP and ensure Conservative victory
[note that in Saanich-Gulf Islands a Conservative had been elected every time since 1993 but each time with only a minority of the votes -- between 37 and 43 percent of the vote.]
This was a famously safe seat for Conservatives.
But, she said, her candidacy meant that more people voted. People who had given up on voting came out to vote. The riding in 2011 had the highest turn-out of any riding in Canada except some riding in PEI.
Her candidacy helped encourage people to vote who normally had stayed away from casting a vote.
[in the 2019 election she received a record percentage of the vote, taking 49 percent of the votes.]
She said what we tell people is to stop thinking about strategic voting but vote for whom you want because that inspires democracy.
Voter turnout will improve when you get a system that only depresses the numbers but also really depresses the voter. so many are part of the stay-at-home party because they say it is too much of a rigged game; I won't even bother.
Multi-member districts with ranked voting gives us PR
[1:05:18] Anita [moderator]
FVC supports municipal PR.
Most of the Ontario municipalities already elect their councillors at large. They already use multi-member districts. They already elect multiple winners per ward so if that local choice is brought back, and a city switches to ranked ballot, they will have proportional representation.
Change to ranked voting means PR-STV.
This will be first time we have had PR at municipal level, I think, since Winnipeg in 1950s. [Monto: actually Calgary in 1971]
So that will be a huge break-through. FVC has spent a large amount of time working in Guelph in the last year toward that end because it has two-member wards.
Multi-member districts or ranked voting are progress toward PR
[1:06:19] Andrew Coyne:
Multi-member districts or ranked voting are good first steps, they are progress toward PR.
Get one, then the other and you have PR (STV).
That is why FVC applauds change to ranked voting such as in AV, because it is progress toward PR.
[PR at federal level is not likely. Municipal reform will likely come before that. That will lead to change elsewhere.]
[1:06:52] Judy Rebick
I believe that any kind of proportional representation is an improvement, better than what we have. If we get ranked ballots, we can point to that and say governments are more stable, more representative.
We have to get people excited about it. it's got to happen. it's got to get a start somewhere.
It happened in London and now people are excited about that.
Operation Black Vote supports a ranked ballot because it got a black woman elected who would not have been elected in a FPTP system.
[1:07:43] Elizabeth May:
People telling her that if the House of Commons committee had supported ranked ballots, electoral reform could have happened but no member of the government proposed ranked ballots as something to vote on.
After Trudeau's major promise in 2015 to reform elections, I was probably the most shocked person on the face of the planet when I learned that the government was set to announce that they were not going to do electoral reform after all.
And I agree with Andrew that once one jurisdiction moves, many will move. and if the Liberals or Conservatives or preferably both realize that FPTP has not benefitted them in a key way, we can still get it federally.
[1:09:30] Anita (moderator) posed a last question.
Do politicians represent the people who elected them or are they just there to vote for a particular party?
In meeting with MPs, and some Liberal MPS do support PR, we are hearing hopes that with reform, MPs will have more freedom to speak their minds and more progress will be made.
Hugh Segal:
Senate is not the hard partisan body it once was.
it has made amendments to legislation that the HofC and government will look at on its merits.
The thing could be extended whereby governments are expected to be fair minded even towards amendments put forward by opposition parties and you begin to get process where government that is arrogant is then asked how can you be so strict when you have only 40 percent of the vote. so a government is pushed to be more receptive so it does not face that reproach.
[1:12:20] Andrew Coyne:
The biggest obstacle to MP's independence is MPs themselves.
It is drummed into them that it is a team sport.
They are terribly confused. They themselves cannot answer what the role of an MP is.
[1:14:25] Judy Rebick
She admitted that she had mis-spoken earlier [at 33:00], that Kayabaga's election in London in 2022 was not secured by AV, that she would have won under FPTP, but AV did help inspire her to run because she had better chance of winning.
I agree with what Andrew has said. Our political system is catastrophic. And it is worse than it used to be.
I can't believe anything Trudeau says.
MPs do not speak out. it is not a democratic system any more, and FPTP is only a part of that.
[1:16:45] Anita (the moderator)
We can tie electoral reform into so many other issues that we care about -- adversarial politics, false majorities, policy lurch, MPs not being able to speak up
[1:17:06] Elizabeth May
I just want to jump in ...
I love Parliament but I hate being called a politician.
I don't blame MPs.
new MPs arrive full of hope to do public service but are instructed in what to do.
need to reduce the role that backroom boys have to control the House of Commons
We need to encourage the new MPs to maintain their willingness to do public service.
[1:20:13] Andrew Coyne:
it is fine to say we want to give more independence to MPs but if they don't want more independence, we can't. ...
in systems where multiple members elected in a district and ranked ballots, MPs can only be elected if they have cross-party appeal. [Monto: some do need to have cross-party appeal but a couple or so would be elected with just first-preference votes, and one or two more with mostly first-preference votes. But receiving vote transfers from eliminated candidates from outside the party would likely be necessary for the others.]
And the power of cross-party appeal gives the MP an independent power base in his riding and gives the MP some independence from party discipline.
[1:22:45] Elizabeth May
But when an MP expresses independence, media present it as sign of dissension in the ranks. ...
[1:23:45] Andrew Coyne:
There is too much preaching to the converted.
Reformers write off two groups but they would be receptive if approached correctly.
Conservatives and Westerners are potential supporters of PR.
Conservatives do not do so well under FPTP. Liberals have won three out of four elections in the last hundred years.
There are few swing districts in the West so voters get little attention.
Voter turnout is low.
Where the left of centre votes are split among two or three parties, it does not split the left of centre vote - it expands it. The left vote actually prospers.
When only the Conservative party stands out on the right, it appears to be the odd man out.
If there were more than one right-wing party, they could say we are not the weirdos here. There are many of us.
An example of this is that when there was a Reform party and a Progressive Conservative party, they together got more votes than the united Conservative Party ever has.
Conservatives can be approached from a self-interest standpoint.
And for Westerners Albertans in particular, why does the Liberal government not need to pay any attention whatsoever to Alberta on energy issues on environment, whatever, is not because the Liberals hold little hope of winning seats in Alberta - it is mostly because the party can basically get in by locking up seats through plurality wins in the East, in Ontario and Quebec, through FPTP.
But if each party had to seek out votes and chase seats in every part of the country, we would not have whole regions being ignored, we would not have such dissatisfaction in the West, we would have much more balanced and nuanced approach to these issues, that would not produce these terrible "us or them" regional politics.
Elizabeth May:
I dispute that Alberta has no power in Canadian energy issues. Let's do thsi panel agin
Anita (moderator)
Judy mentioned Pierre Trudeau. Let's recall that Pierre Trudeau was advocating for PR back in 1979, cause of the same problems we are having - complete sweeps of the western provinces, no Liberal representation in the West...
Thanks to every one for joining us for an hour and a half...
I am glad you are all still so passionate and convinced on need for PR...
Bye...
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Monto: I hope I recorded the main points mentioned by the speakers.
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