Nick Loenen had article in The Province (a BC newspaper) "Here are all my reasons for voting for proportional representation" (Novemb er 12, 2018) in advance of that province's referendum on whether to switch from first past the post to proportional representation.
Among his points he said Norway's 1 trillion savings from its oil compare well to Alberta measly $18B which has not gone up in 30 years. He attributes this to Norway's pro-rep versus Alberta First past the post system. He wrote that Lougheed made a good start but subsequent governments have raided the Heritage Savings fund. This overlooks the fact that there have really been no subsequent governments until for years ago. After Lougheed followed 35 years of Conservative rule.
Loenen wrote that Norway which has pro-rep has multi-party governments therefore a change in government does not bring in a whole new lot [of politicians]. Political change tends to be moderate, incremental and less polarizing." He is saying that Alberta political culture is different than this.
Yes and no.
It is different in so many ways - it is not even on the same planet.
Alberta until four years ago had not had any political change since 1971. Conservatives followed by Conservatives followed by Conservatives, due in large part to Alberta's use of FPTP, which exaggerated and exaggerates the importance of its large and power-monopolizing Conservative plurality/ sometime slight majority.
Despite what Loenen said, Alberta has not suffered from wide, not incremental and more polarizing political change because it has not experienced political change until the last four years.
We have had bad management where the province's resources have been allowed to be plundered by U.S. corporations and private Canadian corporations for the benefit of this owners/shareholders and management and foreign interests. For this Alberta has received a pittance. instead of using Canadian capital and Canadian management and Canadian public corporations, which would have reaped 100 percent profit to Canada, we get ridiculously small royalties, something like 10 percent of the profits of our oil.
FPTP has prevented political change - it has discouraged alternative views - it has allowed a party who does not hold our best and long-term interests in mind to control our resources for 44 of the last 48 years. The fault has been not too much political change but too little.
This lack of democratic responsiveness has lead to low turn-out for elections as disgruntled non-Conservative figured their candidate has no chance and even Conservatives stay home because their candidate is a shoo-in.
FPTP has produced such lop-sided representation that 16 opposition, one-fifth of the Legislature, has been something to be celebrated as a rare thing since the 1960s. Loenen is correct that government s are no multi-party government in Alberta heck, it could almost be said that the Legislature is not even multi-party. Alberta has historically been burdened with a one-party state. We have not had the solace of competitive politics since maybe the 1950s.
The 1950s were when Alberta went from using single transferable voting in the cities and Alternative Voting in the rural area, to using FPTP. STV in the cities ensured that each city would elect a mixed body of representatives that reflected the views of the voters. Alternative voting in the rural areas did not encourage minority representation instead it wiped it out - by ensuring that a candidate to be elected had to have he support of a majority of the voters in the district. Under both systems those elected varied from those who would have been elected under FPTP, where only one candidate wins in each district and he/she is the single leader of the pack who wins whether he has a majority of the votes or not.
It is called First past the post because it is like a dog race where all the runners are divided into different heats. The winner in each, the first past the post, is declared he winner whether the dogs he is running against are fast or slow.
If the organizer wants a certain dog to win he puts him to run against slow dogs in a heat. This in political terms is called gerrymandering and with the province divided into 87 seats, with Edmonton divided into 20 districts, and Calgary into 26 districts, this is not difficult to do. But it is not fair for a dog just slightly faster than a group of slow dogs to be awarded the same accolades as a dog faster than a pack of fast dogs, nor is it just for a fast dog who came in second against a super fast dog to not get any reward while a slow dog who ran against even more slower dogs to get rewarded. But this is how First past the post works.
Many win under First past the post through vote splitting. For example, those who oppose the Conservative government were split between the Liberal and the NDP in times past. Many Conservatives were elected by less than a majority of the voters while a majority backed Liberals and NDP taken together. Alternative Voting would have prevented this.
Vote splitting can be seen as a race between horse-drawn wagons, perhaps a chuck wagon race. Say the Blue wagon has four pretty good horses and they can pull the wagon around the course in one minute ten seconds. A red wagon is pulled by two fast horses and two slow horses - they together can pull the wagon around the course in one minute and 20 seconds, the fast horses could do it in a minute, the slower horses in a minute and 30 seconds. The horses of the green wagon are the same as the Red wagon.
The Blue wagon wins the race.
But if you were allowed to change horses you could put the two fastest horses from the red wagon with the two fastest horses from the green wagon and they could pull that poor wagon around the course in a flat minute, to win the race. Single transferable voting allows votes, like horses in the example, to be transferred to where they will do the most good. That would allow the truly fastest horses to get their just reward. And in voting it allows voters to see their votes used and not just thrown away, as they are in 40 to 60 percent of FPTP elections.
It is time Alberta returned to seeing votes respected and not just thrown away.
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