FAIR VOTING BC and SPRINGTIDE
COLLECTIVE FOR DEMOCRACY
SOCIETY
Applicants
– and –
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA
in Springtide and Fair Vote BC challenge of present election system, judge ruled that First Past The Post is not against the Constitution.
But the history he seems to base the ruling on is flawed, and his cherry-picked examples of negativities of PR and the positives of FPTP seem suspect to me.
But it was apparently the judge's first "stab at it" and the topic of electoral reform is not an easy one. so hopefully it is a start -- even if we have to start at grade 1 level and work up.
Here's a few of his misconceptions:
He seems to be comparing U.S. presidential elections with government performance under PR although no one is saying replace presidential elections with PR - you can't. single-winner elections can never be PR.
He credits minority win (Obama 2008) in U.S. presidential election as outcome of FPTP and ignores how under U.S.'s non-PR presifential election system a woman lost in the 2016 U.S. presidential election despite getting more votes than her opponent.
credits PM-ship of an East Indian in UK as outcome of FPTP when that person never had to fight an election under FPTP or any other system to get to that post (he was acclaimed leader) and never has fought an election under FPT P or any other system since becoming PM
ignores minority successes in Ireland, which uses PR
describes France as having PR when it does not
and in some places implies PR would be country-wide, (not necessarily what will happen) and in other places that its districts could not go past provincial borders. (true enough)
seems to believe that SMP (FPTP) allows representation of the local district when often more than half the voters voted for someone other than the elected member.
takes the good things that happen today for a party under FPTP and ignores the bad things that happened to the party before under FPTP
looks at bad things that happen under PR and ignores the good things.
he emphasizes how NZ is different from Canada needlessly (in my view)
below I will adopt his terminology --
"SMP" means Single-Member Plurality (FPTP)
unfortunately the "P" does not stand for Proportional.
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[7] Professor Carey goes on in his affidavit to explain, although several large and important democracies – the U.S., U.K., and Canada – use a strictly SMP system, many more democraciesuse a PR system or a hybrid of the two. A few have in recent decades moved from SMP to PR, although there does not appear to be any jurisdiction that has moved in the opposite direction.
Actually in federal elections in U.S. SMP is not strictly used.
Wiki "U.S. House of Representatives": "As there is no legislation at the federal level mandating one particular system for elections to the House, systems are set at the state level. As of 2022, FPTP is adopted in 46 states, instant-runoff voting in two states (Alaska and Maine), and two-round system in two states (Georgia and Mississippi)."
U.K. uses FPTP for national elections but for the devolved states (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), FPTP is not used or if it is, in the ase of Scotland regional top-up is used to make results proportional.
[8] Canadians are generally familiar with SMP, having had it as the prevailing electoral
methodology since the country’s inception. PR is therefore presented here as an alternative to the existing system. In their extensive record of theories and comparative electoral systems, the Applicants have demonstrated that PR is a fair, and, with certain admitted limitations, egalitarian system for democratic elections.
As many as 20 Canadian MPs at a time were elected through Block Voting, not single-winner FPTP.
BC 1871 prov. election -- only three members, out of the province's 25 MLAs, were elected through FPTP.
New Brunswick "Each district was assigned multiple MLAs (2-5) roughly according to population size and the presence of distinct communities inside each district" (Wiki "1970 New Brunswick general election")
and so on
although it might be said that FPTP is the prevailing electoral methodology, it was far from universally used, especially in city elections.
In some cities, city elections have seen little use of FPTP. In Edmonton, every general city election previous to 2010 never used FPTP to elect city councillors.
"[22] By contrast, a PR election, as its name suggests, will have multiple winners in proportion to the votes each attains in any given electoral district. All candidates who pass a pre-determined minimum number or percentage of votes, regardless of how may parties field a candidate in the district, will be seated in Parliament as representative of that district. There will ultimately be more MPs than districts, since PR requires a division of the district’s seats among multiple candidates."
even without PR that was the case - when Canada had as many as 11 ridings electing two MPs. There were "more MPs than districts."
taking the words as he wrote them, the pre-determined minimum number of votes seems more like NYC's old time STV/uniform quota than any PR that we would use in Canada.
Quota under STV is not minimum but the amount needed to be assured of election.
The electoral threshold under list PR system (and MMP) does not apply to the individual candidate.
clauses 15 - 18 seems to imply that the Constitution calls for single-member districts, overlooking that the BNA Act actually states clearly that Halifax riding will have two members. (and that 11 ridings (including Halifax) at one time or another elected more than one MP - without any constitutional problem. Redistricting is not determined by the constitution but by the Canada Election Act in effect at any one time.
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II. The Legal Framework [15- 18 ... As stated at the outset, the impugned provisions of the CEA establish a legal regime in which the candidate who receives the most votes in a given riding, or electoral district, is elected as a Member of Parliament. The CEA creates the electoral districts, which are defined in section 2(1) as “a place or territorial area that is represented by a member in the House of Commons.” ... The Canadian Elections Act may say that now but that is not the way elections used to work. The present act can be changed, It was written differently for more than a hundred years from 1870 to 1970, allowng two-member ridings.
III. SMP vs. PR: representation and accountability SMP is not representation and it is not accountability "... in SMP jurisdictions voter turnout is relatively small, and overall voter satisfaction with the system is correspondingly low."
that is true enough (he starts out much better than he finishes -- see #103 below!)
22. [implies uniform quota - no one is calling for that. PR does not have to mean that. but sure if each memer is elected with about same number of vots then you can have rough idea of how many votes each member should represent (excluding the Territories): (40M minus non-voters) times .8 (expected 80 percent turnout rate under PR) divided by 335 MPs.]
but no one is saying that there wil be a minimum quota.
"[24] Another of the expert witnesses, Professor Benjamin Ferland of the University of Ottawa, opines that as an upshot of this, parties whose MPs are elected by in proportion to their votes rarely can form a government without entering into coalition agreements with other parties. As a result, while multiple parties may be part of a governing coalition, their policies and electoral platforms are typically compromised, traded off, or abandoned in forming agreements with their coalition partners." choice is apparently between in some cases, a party elected to power despite not getting majority of votes, upholding most of its promises which voters did not endorse, or a party that takes the most seats but not a majority of seats, elected to its due share of seats based on that level of voter support, being unable to fulfil all its promises but still fulfilling most of them. I know which choice I would like -- the PR one. "[25] Further, Dr. Peter John Loewen of the University of Toronto explains that while PR produces ideological diversity among parties, SMP emphasizes geographically concentrated loyalties. The SMP system therefore reflects Canada’s diversity in the regional sense typical of a physically large nation." and BQ get more than their due in Quebec. (the minority (other parties) in Quebec get les than their due.) SMP ensures representation of a geographically concentrated party where it is geographiclly concentrated but ignores them where they are not, Conservatives get more due representation on the Prairies. But Conservatives get les than their due share in Toronto and in PEI, and many other places outsdie of Alberta and Sask. SMP does not represent properly parties with cross-Canada appeal, the parties that we need to bind the country together. and SMP does not ensure due representation to parties like Greens or NDP who are minorities in all provinces but are not geographically concentrated in any one province. But provinces are not important- each riding is taken separately and tevery one except the winner is not represented.. The NDP and Green's and People's Party's right to representation is just as important and worthy of protection as the BQ's. or it should be. is the judge picking winners?
he seems unnecessarilly worried about size of PR districts
"[23] Again, assuming a contested election, a PR system will result in substantially all members of the electorate having a representative in their district for whom they voted. The number of representatives in any district may potentially be sizeable since PR requires a multi-party presence reflecting a proportionate division of the multiple political alignments in the electorate."
But DM-5 is generally (but not universally) regarded as producing PR
Winnipeg's 10 MLAs was very Proportional and the district was no larger than represented by the mayor of the city.
Bloc Quebecois not lucky under FPTP overall
"[25] ... The SMP system has given the Bloc’s Quebec-oriented voice a stature in Parliament that it might not otherwise gain through the less regionalized concentration fostered by PR." PR in Canada is not likely to use PR district that cross provincial borders.
so still vote would be "regionalized" -
under FPTP it is actually localized (not regionalized at all) with 78 different battles occuring in the different places in Quebec
under PR it would be organized and authentic. (actually more regionalized!)
PR is very seldom accused of denying a minority party its due share of seats.
but in this case when BQ got 9.5 percent of the HofC seats with only 7.6 percent of the national vote, that particular small party would be decreased in representation under PR, as the judge states correctly -
but he likely is over-estimating BQ's success under FPTP.
under PR the BQ would lose seats but not but very many. 7.6 percent of 338 is 26 seats so its rep. would drop by 6 seats from its present 32.
but actually Quebec's 78 seats times BQ's 32 percentage of votes in the province would give it 25 seats. so yes, without the unfairness of FPTP, BQ will take fewer seats but that is actually its due share - under PR it will be guaranteed its due share of rep.
while under FPTP it might drop to only ten seats or fewer next time around with only small shift in votes, as happened before --
In the 2011 federal election, the Bloc received more than 23 percent of the popular vote in Quebec. it was due 17 seats under PR but under FPTP it elected only 4 members! [26] In short, SMP requires that a single member be elected per district, while PR requires that at least two (or, typically, more) members be elected per district. This gives rise to differing numbers of MPs, from various districts and parties, bargaining of ways to consolidate political power and form a government. That bargaining ultimately impacts, sometimes dramatically, on the relationship between campaign platforms and post-election policies. yes, so? district will have varying number of members - they will collect among their own caucuses anyway. each district does not need its own side of the chamber. don't have to sit on their own discrete side. and no, the MPs will not be bargaining as in 338 separate MPs negotiating a coalition. party leaders of the minimum number of parties to establish a majority in the chamber will negotiate. parties already know who their friends are before the first sitting. ther will be no consensus of all parties and there will be no negotiaton of all parties or all MPS acting separately. there wil lstial be the ins and ghte outs and the ins will have to have a majority of voters behind them because a majority of seats means a majority of votes. under SMP parties without majority of votes often take power but that is against will of the majority when that happens.
...
judge goes on to defend minority rule
27. It also shows that SMP generally leaves little room for parties to bargain and maneuver with each other in forming a government, but that it often produces majority governments in which the governing party is free to implement its policies flexibly in accordance with prevailing soci5al and eco nomic needs."
such a majority government is actually usually a false-majority government/ minority rule.
the needs under FPTP are obviously discovered not through how votes are cast but in accordance with the needs as perceived by the government's needs or the needs of the minority that elected the government.
he goes on to defend FPTP as protector of racial rights. As if.
"[39] For example, nothing in the record can explain why the U.S., with its unusual state-by-state electoral college system for presidential elections, and the U.K., with its SMP elections and Westminster parliamentary system, are alone among the western democracies to have produced a racialized person as president or prime minister at the pinnacle of government..."
many, many countries (even if they are not what he calls western democracies) using PR have elected leaders who are of darker skins.
PR is actually majority rule and if voters vote for candidate of the same skin colour, then necessarily they will elect a leaders of the same skin colour.
if that is the case in a dominantly-dark skinned country, they elect "racialized" persons
in white-dominated western democracy, they elect whites under PR in most cases but person of ability of any colour can rise to the top under PR. if people vote for different skin colour person, they will be elected under PR,
and possibly but not necessarily that would happen under an unfair election system that uses FPTP. or under FPTP possibly the result will not reflect how people vote at all. in the 2008 face-off of black person (Obama) and while person (McCain), Obama got 8M more votes (a small bit of the 131M votes that were cast) and was elected while only eight years later a white woman running for president against a white man, she got 3M more votes and was not elected. so lets not cherry-pick happy accidents as defence of FPTP. FPTP is hardly a dependable way to represent disempowered races or women and anyways the president is not going to be replaced by PR - the election of a single person can never be proportional so it is a red herring. United Kingdom Rishi Sunak, since 2022 has been the first British Asian prime minister, but has never been elected through a general election (FPTP has nothing to do with his PM-ship.) we have yet to see if the election system will give him a majority of seats with or without a majority of votes. so far all he has done is win a leadership fight He was elected unopposed as Conservative leader so FPTP should not be credited for Sunak occupying the highest bench in the land.
Ireland under PR has an East Indian as top man. but judge does not mention that...
but the judge did good here:
"the evidence adduced by Professor LeDuc demonstrates that in PR systems, where voters perceive their vote as translating directly into the representation that they voted for, voter contentment with the system is relatively high; by comparison, in SMP systems, where large numbers of voters end up without representation from their favoured candidate or party, voter satisfaction is notoriously low."
there is a lot worse he could have said as well -- the artificial regionalism, the false majority government, the FPTP straitjacket that forces voters to vote strategically, etc.
[34] Professor Bird also opines that improving the fair representation of diverse minorities would require not just enactment of a PR system, but implementation of several other structural changes: modest district size in most ridings (3 to 7 members per district), the creation of special electoral districts with a smaller number of members in northern areas where the Indigenous population is concentrated, and a legislated role for diverse local populations in the ranking of candidates. Proportional representation in and of itself will not suffice to increase minority representation; at the very least, the numbers of minority representatives will inevitably turn on the political disposition of party leadership in populating the party list in a PR system that depends on party votes rather than individual candidate votes.
modest district size is not required - the smaller the district (the lower the DM) the larger percentage of votes a minority party would need to have to get a seat. because under fair votoing (list PR, STV) the higher DM the more proportional is the result. the opposite holds true for unfair votong sytem such as Block Voting.
under SNTV, the larger the DM the more voters are satisfied throgh "secondary representation" due to candidates of a wider range of parties being elected and thus range of opinion being represented in the district.
the creation of special electoral districts in northern area, with low DM, is not required to have minority representation - it is will likely naturally occur under distrcit PR system anyway. As the goal of switch away from FPTP is not to produce perfect proportionality, but only an improvement on the present un-representative sitution, getting PR everywhere is not necessary.
each of the Territories will still be represented by one MP, and that can never be proportional. but the effect of having province-wide PR or PR in MMDs in the provinces wold be massive improvement over present system.
votes crossing provincial borders would require constitutional change
Territories each are not eligible for more than 1 MP so no PR there. (without constitutional change)
The goal of switch away from FPTP is not to produce perfect proportionality, but to adopt a system where each district whether sub-provincial or province-wide produces due representation to each substantial group whether majority or minority.
minority representation so poorly done under FPTP is emphasized in regards to unfairness but due rep. of majority is justified under fair voting just as much as due representation of minority groups.
under FPTP the only minority group that gets representation is the one that wins - and when it wins, it does against the will of the majority (suffering from vote-splitting)
Proportional representation in and of itself will not suffice to increase minority representation; yes, PR will ensure that minority groups that previously got less than their due share of votes will get more. yes it will, to the degree that voters vote along the lines of gender or ethnicity or party and to the degree that the PR system is P.
but under list PR the diversity of rep is limited by the way the party brass formulate the party list. (in olpen list PR, partis want to prec=sent as diverse a slate as possible so as to invige voter support. so even though party lists are set by brass under any list PR system, there is push to have diversity in system where votes can vote directly for candidates.)
the judge's next staement only applies to list PR and then actually only to closed list list PR.
at the very least, the numbers of minority representatives will inevitably turn on the political disposition of party leadership in populating the party list in a PR system that depends on party votes rather than individual candidate votes.
He does not go on to say that under STV or SNTV or open list PR other factors than party can play a part. when voters have choice of candidate of different genders and ethnicity even if they vote along for a party they have choice within that party's offering to choose along gender or ethnic lines or any other factor they want.
Not exmining the behaviour of PR in STV or open-list PR, he goes directly to 35
[35] The evidence with respect to minority representation in different electoral systems is even less definitive than that of women’s representation. On one side, Professor Bird cites the example of New Zealand as one where the move to a form of PR has coincided with a significant increase in the representation of minorities, to the point where New Zealanders of European origin are now slightly underrepresented (63% of MPs compared to 70% in the general population), and the indigenous Maori and Pacific Islander populations are now proportionately represented. There is, however, relatively little comparative evidence with which to assess whether social/political conditions in New Zealand have made it unique, or whether it can be taken as typifying other democratic jurisdictions in this respect.
under NZ's system votes place their votes in SMD where each party presents a one-name paty list (under SMP) or in top up they vote just for parties. so it is not clear that voters voted 63 percent in fvour of Eurpean origian candidates or 70 percent of some other percent altogether. NZ's system other than Maori seats and the Maori party running candidates in normal constituencies (undeer SMP) is not race based or particularly race friendly.
with party of choice decided , votes can not veer their votes to a Maori or coloured-skin candidate any more than to a white European-origin candidate within that party, and visa versa.
any system with MMD, fair voting and candidate based voting --open-lst PR or STV or SNTV -- would allow race based voting within a party's offering, just not NZ's system.
so don't judge behaviour of all PR systems by looking at NZ.
it may not be that the social/political conditions in New Zealand have made it unique but the detail of its election system, unique from other forms of PR.
...
[75] More important here is the nature of the equality right claimed by the Applicants. Under section 15 of the Charter, Canadians do not have a right to an egalitarian society at large; rather, they have a right not to be discriminated against by a law or other state action. Accordingly, “[a] complainant under s. 15(1) must establish that he or she is a member of a discreet or insular minority group”:
This judge is the same man who thinks the U.S .election syste, is fine for minorities because Obama squeeked in but ignores Clinton getting more votes than Trump but not being elected.
I am nost sure what he would say if women signed the Challenge saying their right to due share of seats has been ignored for more than hundred years.
76. ... from their affidavits alone one does not know (except by guessing from their names) if they are women, or racialized individuals, or members of a religious minority, or of a historically discriminated against sexual orientation, etc. They do not depose to personal discrimination on those grounds. so it is fine to disempower, metaphorically disenfranchise whole sections of the population, but unless it is shown to be a personal matter, then it is okay? ...
[85] I believe these affiants. They express their commitment to the party of their choice with obvious sincerity. But they are all committed political activists, and in that capacity are the exception rather than the rule.
so because they are the exception, they must accept that their vote will be ignored again and again?
In #76, he said the challenge was not personal, now he says they are only personal.
this judge just does not seem to care.
...
[87] The entire democratic point is that we engage in a nationwide exercise every four or five years in order to determine whether the electorate has changed its mind. Candidates, including previously unsuccessful candidates, do not just stand for election, they run for election – i.e. they campaign. They do so because they expect voters to be open minded, and open to change, not immutable in their views.
no, we hold elections every four or five years to see if we can get it right and we seldom do.
so we lurch back and forth from one disproportional result to another with only about 20 percent of voters changing their minds or a different 20 percent voting - and that alone raises or overturns whole governments.
[89] Voters can, and do, change their minds, sometimes in large numbers. In fact, the very evidence that the Applicants put forward to demonstrate the anomalous results of past elections under SMP shows this.
not at all. the evidence shows how a small change in voting behaviour (perhaps caused by different people voting) has major effects sometimes and sometimes no effect at all. even when a party takes more votes than the previous election (the NDP in Alberta in 2019) it loses government.
in other cases a government can slip below half of the votes cast and still be elected to government.
the history of SMP does not show masses of people change their minds but that small change makes big difference.
Boyer recounted how the percentages in his riding fluctuated:
the judge sees this as evidence of changing voting behaviour
overlooking how different people might have voted or with vote turnout fluctuating, the same group can take different percentage even with same number of votes, if turnout rises or drops
"it is the opposite of party allegiance as an immutable characteristic of the voters. He does not give raw numbers, but it is evident from the percentages that thousands of voters in his district alone changed allegiances from the Liberals to the NDP in 1988, and then even more switched back to the Liberals in 1993.
93] As indicated in the discussion earlier in these reasons, the Applicants’ argument with
respect to analogous grounds states that the SMP system discriminates against women and racial minorities, and that the remedy for this discrimination is to convert to a PR electoral system. This point is then divided into a multi-part argument in Applicants’ counsel’s factum, addressing the issue of gender discrimination as follows: “FPTP contributes to the significant underrepresentation of Canadian women in Parliament by
1. reducing the incentives of parties to place women in the most winnable districts; and
2. reducing the electoral success of the NDP and Green Party...”
[94] The Applicants’ argument goes on to explain the underrepresentation of women in Canada by comparing the Canadian Parliament to the New Zealand Parliament: “as strikingly illustrated in New Zealand, the increased success of small left parties under PR rules directly increases the number of women in Parliament while also causing a contagion effect, leading larger parties to nominate women over time. In Canada, the contagion effect would be significant.”
95. [But] ... Other than a superficial inclination to think that two English-speaking, former British colonies will emulate one another, there is nothing in the record to suggest, let alone prove, that Canada will follow New Zealand’s lead in any public policy area. ...
PR means you could have guaranteed representation for women. (PR does not have to be about parties.)
NZ does not have that and still does better than Canada regarding women rep.
but New Zealand's is not the only form of PR.
Brazil is much closer to Canada's population and size than NZ. andeven if its PR record siskinder to women and ethnic racial groups within its borders, the judge may still say what works in Brazil is not sure to work in Canada.
fact is, there is no country like Canada. and no way to prove that Canada will be more fair under PR than FPTP
except to know in your heart and from looking at the hundred countries that use it, and the developed democracies that use it, such as the countries in Europe
but no they are not Canada.
there is no other Denmark
there is no other Sweden
there is no other Switzerland, etc.
but each does well with their own form of PR and Canada would too.
all PR countries today do better job of representing women than Canada - is my feeling not grounds for legal challenge but check the stats and I am sure you will find that.
[102] For example, it takes only a passing knowledge of modern Canadian history to know that it was the Conservatives who produced Canada’s only woman prime minister:...
not much of a fair test when NDP and Greens, just for examples, have never been able to choose the PM. NDP have had female leaders who would have been PM , if they had formed government but no dice. for God's sake...
[103] And it takes only a little more reading beyond the front pages to know that although the Green Party was led during the last federal election by the first woman of colour to head a national political party, it was a divisive moment for the party rather than a unifying one. Indeed, it resulted in one of the party’s only three MPs demonstrating that political allegiance is not immutable by crossing the floor to another party in protest:
really? based on that, perhaps the judge is saying women shoud not be leaders, or what?
and what kind of representation is that when member crosses floor? what accountability? but it happened under SMP!
it can happen under PR sure (and it is even more troubling under list PR) so it is not even part of the discussion.
I'd like to see Trudeau be asked to stand next to the judge and see if he wants to tarnish his image by endorsing a person who says the things that he does
[105] As the Respondent points out in its factum, the SMP system tends toward the larger parties because its designers favour those parties, and not as a matter of political bias. The system ends up favouring larger, centrist parties because it pulls the electorate and the candidates’ campaigns toward the centre.
when a separatist was elected in a byelection in 1982 in Alberta, that was not example of emphasis on centrism.
if the Conservatives or the Liberal take majority government next time with less than a majority of votes, that is not hallmark of democracy -it may or may not have been even the goal of the designer (if ther was even a "designer"). FPTP is just simple way to go but obviously one that produces unforeseen results when used for three- or more- cornered contests.
the SMP system helps big parties and makes them have big tents, but it is not a way to have stable governments we lurch back and forth and never find a centre.
...
122 ... Each electoral district is to be represented by a single Member of
Parliament (with the original exception of Halifax, whose two MPs were allotted to the area that covered both the City of Halifax and the County of Halifax, and which in 1968 reverted to one MP per riding like the rest of the country)
not rest of the country!
He does not seem to know that 11 ridings in all had two members, not just Halifax. and in varying numbers they had it for good bits of the hundred years from 1870 to 1970.
so FPTP was not univerally used from 1870 to 1970.
...
127. ... While it is true that the particular districts and allocations established in 1867 have changed over time, the basic structure of these sections of the Constitution Act, 1867, and in particular the one-member-per-district formula, has not changed. This includes the specific addition of the right to vote in section 3 of the Charter, which contains no provision repealing section 40 (or any of the other electoral sections).
no, it did change -- "in particular the one-member-per-district formula, has not changed" is wrong.
the one-member-per-district formula was not used in spots stretching from PEI and Halifax, to Ottawa, to west coast. at least those 11 ridings did not use tht formula, some of the time.
132, ... (although the original Halifax allocation of two representatives may leave some small room for debate on necessity of a single member).
that plus the other ten shows SMP not only way to go.
Districts, yes, districts must be used but no requirement that the original mostly one-member districts must be maintained
votes must stay within provincial borders, sure
but MMDs allowed, for sure.! [more on that below]
[138] The upshot of this is that PR may well be made to comply with the Constitution’s existing electoral principles, if not its mechanics. In fact, there are scholars who view all questions of constitutional interpretation to ultimately be grounded in the principle of proportionality: see David M. Beatty, The Ultimate Rule of Law (Oxford University Press, 2004), at 159-188.
no, PR's mechanics are no problem if we accept that MMDs are allowed.
A districts covering a whole city or in large cities, districts of ten members are within the Constitution and would be adequately proportional in my view, at least a great improvement over present situation.
the Halifax riding covered more than just the city so there is no law that a district cannot cover a whole city and more.
[139] However, even if a PR system could be made to fit the Constitution’s requirements, one cannot say on the basis of the constitutional text that an SMP system is unconstitutional. As indicated at the outset of these reasons, the question is not whether PR works, but whether SMP is prohibited. SMP is, in fact, the paradigmatic example of a constitutionally valid electoral system in Canada; it is specifically called for in the Constitution Act, 1867.
only in part it was. not for Halifax.
[141] Respondent’s counsel point out that, in fact, implementing PR will inevitably entail some form of constitutional amendment, even if it is held to be a system that in principle conforms to constitutional norms. Assuming that PR representation in the House of Commons were to be determined on a province-by-province basis, as it would have to be under the Constitution Act, 1867, section 51A guarantees four seats to Prince Edward Island. Given P.E.I.’s small percentage of the national population, that would, in turn, require the addition of hundreds of additional House seats to other regions of the country in order to maintain the proportionality of result the Applicants seek.
it is too bad that the Respondent’s counsel said that -- no constitution change is required only re-districting.
I agree if only because it is easier route toward PR anyway
--"Assuming that PR representation in the House of Commons were to be determined on a province-by-province basis, as it would have to be under the Constitution Act, 1867". yes let's say that without constitutional change, votess cannot cross provincial borders. fine
we can still have quite-adequate PR within each province, due to one province having about a third of the coutnry's seats, and another having a fifth, and and two more having about 10 percent each, the necessary division of the electorate into those ten parts would not affect PR badly.
Even DM of 5 in about 65 districts across the country (leaving out the three Territorial seats, PEI's 4, and the odd fractions in the other 9 provinces) would be massively more fair than the present FPTP system.
But in fact even a candidate-based votoing system like STV can be used in districts electing as many as 21 members. and list PR has no ceiling on DM, DM-100 is easily perceivable. so all of Canada could conceivably be covered by
DM-5 or less about 85 districts plus 3 members for the territories
DM-21 (or less) 19 districts plus 3 members for the territories
DM-100 or less 11 districts plus 3 members for the territories.
so the provincial ceiling on DM presents no problem PR-wise.
if we even had just one MMD in each province , electing at least 4 members through single voting (STV or list PR or SNTV) we would be assured of never again having a one-party sweep of a a province's seats.
as currently affects two provinces and in the past at any one time affected that many or more provinces again and again.
without the one-party sweeps of a province's seats, we would suffer much less from regionalism. and also voter dissatisfaction and disproportionality of legislative chambers would be addressed..
Sure PEI is over-represented, and would be under PR as it consitutionally must be until that particular part of the Constitutoin is changed - not my goal)
PEI's over-represention is just small thing -- the result there visa vis the rest of the country will always be unproportional - but this is small thing compared to the unfairness and great waste of votes under FPTP.
under FPTP half the votes cast are set aside - this is the bigger and more signficant issue than trying to make PEI's 4 seats proportional (rep by pop) within Confederation.
and actually the queston that the judge is ruling on is whether FPTP is consittutional and by extension whether it could be repalced within the constitution by something more proportional - the answer is unequivocally that the election system is not fair, is not equal to all and that yes ther are many systems that would be more fair than the present ssytem and they can be brought in easily and within the constitution.
The distribution of seats to provinces has nothing to do with the case anyway.
So we accept that the election results under PR will not be perfectly proportional to parties due to the division of the electorate into provinces (and likely districts within the larger provinces) and due to the slight imperfections in the rep by pop formula necessitated by the Constitution, but still earnestly believe that PR within each province or district will ensure that, the votes cast within each province woud be proprotionally allocated to parties based on votes cast within the province or the district and that will substantially improve the accountability of government, the composition of the chambers of of government and voter satisfaction and so on.
[144] Applicants’ counsel points to the Halifax example in section 40 of the Constitution Act, 1867, to indicate that it is conceivable under our electoral first principles to have multiple representatives in a given electoral district. As indicated previously, Halifax is an anomaly in this respect. One would have to come to a deeper understanding of the historical currents that gave rise to that district being allocated two Members of Parliament in 1867 in order to take any point of principle from it.
Ten other ridings as well!
[145] But it is beyond debate that the three norther territories cannot have multiple members. Section 51(2) makes each territory a single district and allocates one representative to each. Byexpress constitutional design, they can each only have one representative.
[146] Accordingly, the Constitution effectively bars Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut from introducing a PR system. As explained earlier in these reasons, PR, by its own logic, requires an electoral district to elect two or more representatives.
fine so no PR in the Territories - still, the other 335 MPs can be elected through PR.
district-level PR allows some to be elected through FPTP or some other system in some places. no one was calling for country-wide PR anyway.
but judge goes on to say that the Territories' single members must mean no PR for anyone
[148] That cannot be. The citizens in Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut have the same rights as all other citizens. If, in order to be constitutionally valid, an election had to give every citizen the right to a representative of their choice by implementing a PR system, the citizens of the three territories could not be denied those rights.
[149] Since the citizens of the three territories cannot, pursuant to section 51(2) of the
Constitution Act, 1867, be permitted to vote for their representatives on a proportionate basis, but rather are compelled to vote for only one representative – i.e. for the first past the post – a move to PR cannot be said to be constitutionally required. In fact, at least in this respect, PR encounters a constitutional roadblock.
let's hope that is not true!
perhaps a notwithstanding clause
or a ruling that the present system is okay enough to be continued in cases where PR cannot be instituted such as single member districts up north. heck, the judge and others are sying SMP is okay for all, so why does the judge not accept that it could be continued up north if we have to?
...
[152] PR has its merits and its shortcomings, as do all electoral systems in a large and complex country, including SMP. To be sure, the Applicants have shown that PR would be a fair system. It is not, however, required by the Constitution. The existing SMP system is compliant with the Constitution and need not change.
IV. Disposition
[153] Sections 2(1), 24(1), and 313(1) of the CEA are constitutionally valid. They do not violate sections 3 and/or 15(1) of the Charter.
[154] The Application is dismissed.
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Well, shoot...
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