Justin Trudeau's Life in Elections

Justin Trudeau's Life in Elections

Justin Trudeau was born in 1971. This was during his father's first term as prime minister.

Pierre had a majority government. But it was not elected with support of majority of the votes. The Liberal party had received 46 percent of the vote but had captured 60 percent of the seats in the House of Commons.

When Justin was one years old, his father's party dropped in popularity and no longer held majority of the seats. It was still the most popular, holding 39 percent of the vote ahead of the Conservatives with 36 percent. But taking just 109 seats, 41 percent of the seats in the HofC, it needed to rely on support from other MPs - the Conservatives' 107 MPs, the NDP's 31 MPs or the Social Credit's 15 MPs.

The government lasted two years and in 1974, when Justin was three years old, there was another election. This time the Liberal vote rebounded - up to 43 percent anyway - and the Liberals took a majority of the seats once again.

Justin Trudeau was seven years old when his family suffered an unfair political tragedy - his father was unfairly deprived of power when his party lost out in a wrong-winner election.

The Social Credit vote collapsed in Alberta. The Conservative received all the Alberta seats but with only 42 percent of the Alberta votes. (This was not the first one-party sweep in Alberta history. It had also happened in 1958, when the Conservatives took less than 60 percent of the votes but all the Alberta seats.)

Because of this, the Conservatives did better in 1979 than in previous elections. Although taking 36 percent of the vote they took more seats than the more-popular Liberals.

Joe Clark's 136 seats gave him a minority government. Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals won 40 percent of the vote and 40 percent of the seats (114 MPs). The Liberals got their proportional share of the seats but the Conservatives got 136 seats when they were only due 101 seats.

Clark's government lasted only nine months. And the Liberals were elected once more to power. The Liberals took a majority of the seats with just 44 percent of the vote.

When Trudeau was just eight years old, the Liberal party achieved this high point of voter support. Since 1968 the Liberal party had never received as high a portion of the vote as it got in 1980. And never yet has the party achieved that level of votes in any election since 1980.

Never has the Liberal party had the support of more than nine out of each 20 voters. But many times - in fact in most elections since 1980 - the Liberals have been elected government.

The Conservative vote has fluctuated too - from a high of more than half in 1984 to only 16 percent in 1993 when the right-wing vote was split due to the Reform party's strong showing in Alberta.

The Liberals' hold in 1980 on those nine out of 20 voters was weak though. 65-year-old Pierre stepped down as Liberal leader and was replaced by John Turner.

Four years later, when Justin was entering his teen-age years, the Conservatives under a new leader Mulroney was elected to majority government. This was last time in Canadian history that any party would receive a majority of the votes. The Liberal portion of votes dropped to 28 percent. Its seat share dropped even further to 14 percent, electing only 40, a drop of 100 MPs. The Liberals were actually due 79 seats - "ripped off" as the teen-age Justin probably phrased it.

When Justin was 17, he worked for John Turner, leader of the Liberal party. But Mulroney was re-elected in this election, which was fought on Mulroney's pet project of free trade with the U.S., which many saw as a serious threat to our autonomy as a country.

When he was 22, the Liberals under Chretien were put back in power and as majority government although receiving less than a majority of the votes - only 41 percent. Conservatives were down to just 2 seats. Although with 16 percent of the votes they were due more than 50.

When Justin was 25, Liberals were again elected to majority government although taking even a lower percentage of the vote than in 1993 - only 39 percent of the vote.

When he was 28, Liberals were again elected to majority government although taking only 41 percent of the vote. These were the golden days for the Justin's Liberal party. They got back-to-back majority governments -- although receiving endorsement from less than majority of voters. Since becoming leader himself in 2013, he has not yet seen back-to-back Liberal majority governments.

Justin's father Pierre passed away in 2000. Pierre perhaps passed on his political torch to Justin at this time. Pierre could look back on a long career in politics including leading several majority governments in the House of Commons - repatriating the Constitution, etc. But Justin has found after inheriting the torch that the Canada of today is not the Canada of yester-year, when his father ruled.

Only one time since Pierre's death has the Liberal party achieved majority government, a thing that Pierre achieved three times - although each time Pierre did it he had just a minority of the votes. Justin would be at the party's helm when the party would again make this achievement..

When Justin was 32, there started a series of short-lived minority governments. No party had enough seats by itself to pass legislation and Canadian parties have not learned to form coalitions or proper stable working relationships with other parties to form a working majority in the HofC when no party takes a majority by itself.

2004 election produced minority Liberal government under Martin

2006 election produced minority Conservative government under Harper. In the 2006 election, 34-year-old Justin saw the Liberal party pushed out of power. after 13 years in power.

2008 election produced another minority Conservative government under Harper. Justin was elected MP. Justin sat alongside 77 other Liberals MPs.- the party in fact was due 88 seats based on its vote share. The Conservatives meantime received about half the seats in the HofC when they deserved only a little more than a third of them.

The next two elections would see the Conservatives, then the Liberals, take majority government without receiving majority of the votes.

When the Conservatives got a false majority government in 2011, Justin was re-elected MP. But now he sat alongside only 33 other Liberal MPs although the party's vote share meant it was due about 60 seats.

in 2013, when Justin was 42, he became leader of the Liberal party. He would lead the Liberal party back to power although never was it the party that a majority of voters voted for.

Since 2013 the Liberal party has only once taken more than 34 percent of the vote. In 2019 and 2021 it would be elected government - minority government but still government - with the support of fewer than a third of the votes.

The next election after Justin took on leadership of the Liberal party, the party took a majority of seats in the HofC although receiving only 40 percent of the vote.

Then followed minority governments elected in 2019 and 2021.

Justin has not seen his party ever take majority of the votes cast by voters, But since 2015 it has never been out of power.

Since 2019 the Liberal party has had only a minority of seats in the HofC, Generally this was 13 percent more of the seats than the party's vote share but the windfall of seats was not enough more to give the Liberal party majority government. Justin's party in 2019 and 2021 took fewer than a third of the votes cast and never more than 48 percent of the seats.

Never has Justin shared power to the extent of forming a coalition government with another party. The NDP propped up his minority government in 2019-2021. The new government elected in 2021 has not yet sat in the Hof C so it is too early to see how co-operative Justin or the NDP leader Singh will be and how long his government will last.

Trudeau will soon be 50 years old - no longer a young man. And in his lifetime he has seen the election of false majority governments of both the Conservatives and the Liberals. And he has seen many minority governments of both Liberal and Conservative types. But in all his life he has seen only one government elected to a majority of seats after receiving a majority of the votes - the Conservatives in 1984.

In fact since he was born, there have been six minority governments elected and only nine majority governments, all but one of them false. Eight times a party has achieved a majority of the sets in the HofC power without taking a majority of the votes.

Only once since Justin was born has a party taken a majority of the votes,But nine times a party has taken a majority of seats in the HofC. Justin's party has twice managed to get the most seats in the HofC with less than 34 percent of the vote.

Those two times the Liberal party took almost half the seats with less than a third of the vote.

In the past when his father was PM and even before that, the leading party has always received a windfall of seats, always taking more seats than its vote share while the smaller parties suffered under-representation. When that meant a party with 40 percent of the vote takes 60 percent of the seats it was bad, but when it means that a party with 33 percent of the vote takes almost half again more seats, taking almost 50 percent of the seats, that makes the discrepancy - and our very electoral system itself - verge toward the ridiculous.

Justin's government has the constitutional right to bring in a new electoral system. And future voters will sit in judgement if he simply lets the present unfair and almost-random system continue in use.

To get a fairer system, we do not need to change how people cast their votes but only how votes are counted and seats allocated.

Justin's government (or the government apparatus) could do this simply by re-districting the ridings - group the seats within a city together to make one or more multi-seat districts, each district electing three to nine MPs.

Each voter would still have one vote. No change necessary there.

No one group could take all the seats in a district. Mixed representation would result. There could be no un-balanced one-party sweeps of a region's or a province's seats.

There would be some votes ignored - some voters would not elect any representation - but the number wasted would be fewer than the 71 percent sometimes seen in districts under the First Past The Post system we use now

And if Trudeau really likes ranked votes he can give that to voters. Ranked votes work well in conjunction with multi-seat districts. It makes STV, the only PR system ever (yet) used in Canadian history.

But actually the main strength of STV is not the ranked votes but the idea that each voter casts just one vote and each district elects many representatives. This together produces mixed representation.

Instant-Runoff Voting - the use of ranked votes in single-winner election contests - will still only elect one person in each district.

How can this be fair when voters are split in support of many different candidates?

When voters vote that way, we need a system that produces a variety of representation in each district to have fairness.

Luckily for us, just a new use of the normal periodical re-districting procedure can give us that.

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