I find it ironic that people seem so worried about policy lurches caused by changes of governments.
For one, policy lurches caused by changes of governments have only happened five times in Alberta's history if that even. How do I know that? Because Alberta has only changed its government five times - yes five times - in 115 years.
Actually most policy lurches and the deepest ones have occurred within a government's tenure in power. There was more of difference between Lougheed and Getty/Klein during the Conservative's stay in power than the change in 1935 from the grassroots-based reformist UFA government to Aberhart's grassroots-based radical interventionist Social Credit government. The Lougheed-Klein change was also deeper than the change in 1971 from Manning/Strom's conservative Social Credit premiership to Lougheed's Conservative social conservative premiership.
It reminds me of the occasion when a British statesman met up with De Gaulle and observed the long time that French governments were in power and how the government varied its policies to suit changed circumstance (and to stay in power). "so few governments and so many changes in policy." De Gaulle responded by pointing to Britain's many changes of government and how despite it all the governments pursued the same policy. "So many governments and still the same policies."
Either situation works as long as the government responds to voters' desire for changed or consistent policy. Can that be said for Alberta? Not generally.
Only in 2015 of all of Alberta's many busts did we have a government ready and willing to part ways with the prevailing situation. That is, a government that maintained consistency by maintaining a high level of spending, but perhaps targeted more to those in need.
In busts, private capital is pulled out of the economy, workers then don't have money to spend - they spend all they have most months anyway - less things bought meant less potential profit and even less capital invested in business and used to hire workers, and so on.
In all other busts but 2015, the government has simply echoed the downturn and reinforced it. It pulled back spending, cutting employment and stopping purchases, re-enforcing the economic ruin around it.
Only in 2015 did we have a government that faced a bust and continued to spend money, using the money to aid struggling people - both to alleviate suffering and also to prop up consumer spending and thus the economy. That is, the NDP government, in order to provide stability and jobs during the downturn, continued the level of spending that the Conservative government had been paying out during the good times, when actually government spending had not been needed to provide jobs.
Every other time we had governments that looked more to the bottom line, to balancing the books. And being right-wing they only saw the way to do this was to cut social spending and expenditure just when the people and the economy needed government to engage in counter-cyclical spending. Thus every government but the NDP actually worsened the bust by withdrawing government spending. This was excused by the government having little savings, having burnt through it during the good times.
The NDP and the UFA share two things.
They are of the same lineage - the UFA were one of the founding groups of the CCF, which led to the NDP.
The other is that they both only governed during black days for Alberta's economy - they had no chance to save money during the good times, but instead inherited governments with bare cupboards, having been cleaned out and pillaged by previous governments.
Kenny's Conservative government also came into government during a downturn. He immediately cut corporate taxes making the income side of government balance sheets worse, and showed traditional Conservative priorities by cutting social spending (health and education ) and increasing expenditures on highways. This is despite the fact that dollar for dollar social spending provides more jobs than capital-intensive highway work, with its monster tractors and earth-moving and paving equipment.
Apparently Kenny saw that the two kinds of expenditures provide different kinds of jobs - ones mostly done by men and ones mostly done by women - and he knew which gender he wanted to serve. Another motive might be that highway workers are more likely to donate to his party' campaign coffers than nurses or teachers.
Elise Stolte in her article "Learning from the Swiss; new right to vote must come with a guarantee of fairness" (Edmonton Journal, March 9, 2020 online) looked interesting to me because it implied a new fairer election system and electoral reform, obviously a pet interest of mine at this time.
Instead it was about referendums used extensively in Switzerland. She did not mention that Switzerland also uses pro-rep. Pro-rep does many things including ensuring governments are elected that will not undercut the referendum system as could easily be done.
I would like to emphasize this -- referendums will do nothing unless governments have will to formulate them fairly, allow impartial facts to come out and put the rulings into effect afterward. Pro-rep besides all the other things it does, will ensure that governments uphold referendums as way for people control of the government - if the voters vote that way. Referendums need pro-rep -- while pro-rep can operate without referendums.
Elise mentioned policy lurches as danger of the present election system we use in Canada and Alberta:
"The opposite of pushing power down to the level of the citizen is concentrating it at the top. That’s the direction both Canada and Alberta have been heading, which means policy direction swings wildly each time the ruling party is turfed. The City of Edmonton isn’t protected against that simply because council has no formal party system."
The evidence of policy lurch even in Edmonton is seen in the Mackinnon Ravine, cleared of its natural woods for the construction of a ravine-style freeway same as Groat Road, despite popular objection. Election year came round, a new council elected, and the project scrapped leaving the ravine empty of trees but unblemished by freeway. A wonderful park for tobogganing but without the Nature that it once had.
And Elise suggested that referendum, as used in Switzerland would alleviate that kind of waste. This is on the idea that voters are more consistent than governments.
For some places that might be true. But in Alberta where we suffer booms and busts every ten years, government truly responding to voters demands would likely engage in policy changes very frequently.
Certainly, more government accountability would be better for people's emotional and financial stability as governments that are subject to voters' wills will do more to flatten the curves - the curve of boom and bust - than ones just looking to serve the basic large minority needed to have majority government under First Past The Post.
Referendums are a form of people control of government but having fair elections where a large proportion of votes are effective is more the kind of reform that Canadians would get behind.
In fact in the past, movements pursuing Direct Legislation (including referendum) made little headway until the election of progressive government - when the need for referendum became un-necessary.
Such was the case in Manitoba in 1922 when the United Farmers of Manitoba were elected. By then awareness of pro-rep where most votes are effective votes had grown and there was a clear need for it as a way to calm the political waters after the turmoil of the General Strike. With the election of the UFM and the election of all the parties of Winnipeg in due measure to their vote share, the end for referendum was over.
Such was the case too in Alberta. The Liberal government (1905-1921) had imposed such conditions on the people's power of referendum that in the history of Alberta only one referendum ever had the required number of signatures to force a referendum. This was the Prohibition referendum of 1915.
Seeing how little power the right of referendum gave the ordinary person, activists switched to pursuing proportional representation. The preferred system of pro-rep at the time was Single Transferable Voting (STV).
vSTV is a voter-driven, candidate-based system of proportional representation at the district level. Each voter casts a single vote, and candidates run in multi-member districts. The combination of Single Voting and multi-member district alone ensures mixed roughly proportional representation in the district.
But STV has another refinement as well - each voter marks his or her first preference and marks back-up preferences. A back-up is used only if the first-preference candidate cannot be elected. It may also be used if the first-preference candidate is elected, to transfer out un-needed votes that would otherwise be wasted.
Because it uses transferable votes, votes can move from candidate to candidate, and from thus from party to party, so the final result may not exactly mirror the initial party tallies. But the final results do mirror the sentiment of the voters. Under STV, most of those elected in each district are elected because they are the second choice of more voters than their competitors. Many are happy enough to see their second choice elected to represent the constituency versus a different candidate who is the choice of a smaller group of voters.
STV is district-based, not overall proportional. But if enough districts use STV, the elected legislature can be quite proportional.
Due to proportionality, voters would have stronger control of the government -
- the majority would get the most seats; and
- all substantial groups would be represented.
And the UFA was elected in part on the promise of PR in 1921. And by 1924 the UFA government had switched elections in Edmonton and Calgary to STV.
The UFA government switched the election system used in the other districts as well. Formerly using FPTP - where many MLAs were elected with only a minority of the vote - the rural districts were switched to Alternative Voting where every MLA had to have a majority of the votes in the district to be elected, whether those votes were only first preference votes, or a combination of first-preference votes plus votes accumulated from other candidates who had little support.
Elise wrote that she was looking forward to new referendum legislation at the provincial level and in Edmonton. She observed "I see too many residents from Edmonton and across the province standing bitterly on the sidelines. That’s the real threat to democracy."
For sure, some (40 percent of voters) are standing on the sidelines, not even getting in the game by casting a vote.
But even most of the voters who vote are sidelined by the existing FPTP system. In the last Edmonton election 86,000 votes elected the councillors, while 101,000 votes were thrown in the trash by being cast for other candidates. Most of these ineffective votes came about artificially through the imposition of 12 separate wards, breaking up voting blocks and families; separating voters from their favoured candidates and separating candidates from their natural constituencies. That is hardly proper representation, hardly a fair election, hardly an adequate democracy.
And that is also what is addressed by pro-rep, the quickest and best method to address governments' self-serving independence of the voters.
Under STV, Edmonton would be one single district or maybe three districts, each district electing multiple councillors, with transferable votes ensuring that votes would have ample opportunity to mark back-up preferences and ensure that their vote would not be just thrown the trash if placed at first on an unsuccessful candidate.
And even if transferable votes are forbidden at this point for Edmonton city elections, just having multiple councillors in each district and each voter only casting one vote would provide proportionality as my other blogs explain.
Thanks for reading.
=============================================== What is STV?
From a 1902 reform magazine: "Thinking it well to have in every number something by way of a brief explanation of proportional voting, I repeat in this number the following. Proportional representation means the use of a reasonable and scientific system of voting instead of the present stupid, unfair and inefficient procedure. Methods: There are several systems by which the principle of proportional representation may be given effect to. Large electoral districts, each electing several members, are a necessary feature. The "quota" plan is usually employed. It means that a quota of the votes elects one representative. To arrive at the quota, the number of valid votes cast is divided by the number of seats to be filled. For instance in a seven-member district any one-seventh of the voters could elect one representative and the other six-sevenths could not interfere with their choice. The three principal systems of proportional representation are the Free List as used in Switzerland and Belgium [party-list pro-rep], the Hare system as used in Tasmania [STV], and the Gove System as advocated in Massachusetts. The Preferential Vote [Alternative Voting/Instant Run-off Voting] -- This is used in the election of single officers such as a mayor. It is not strictly a form of pro-rep but is akin thereto, and uses part of the same voting methods. The object of preferential voting is to encourage the free nomination of candidates and to obtain always a clear majority at one balloting, no matter how many candidates are nominated." (From the Proportional Representation Review Dec. 1902, p. 77) (Hathi Trust online resource, page 81/180) Thanks for reading and happy new years. Check out my blog "list of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject. ----------------------------------- 2020 anniversaries: *Alberta is celebrating 150 years in Confederation 1870-2020 *100th Anniversary of STV first being used to elect legislators in Canada Winnipeg MLAs first elected through STV in 1920 ============================================================== 2021 anniversaries: * 100th Anniversary of United Farmers of Alberta party being elected on promise to bring in electoral reform, a promise fulfilled three years later. * 50th Anniversary of election of Lougheed's Progressive-Conservatives. With only 46 percent of the vote they took more than 60 percent of the seats. NDP received 11 percent of the vote but elected just one (Grant Notley), instead of the nine MLAs it was due.
Thanks for reading
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