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Tom Monto

Proposed reform to British House of Lords could work for Canadian Senate

Updated: May 22, 2021

Recent article on need to reform the British House of Lords has interesting parallels with the Canadian situation.


From: “Archaic disgrace”: Elections renew and refresh our politicians but what about our parliaments? Experts call for change on both sides of the border

(Mark Aitken, Sunday Post, April 18, 2021)


Personally, I would take small steps because they’re the ones that tend to happen.*

The first would be to put pretty stringent limits on the prime minister’s appointment power. You could also require there to be fairer representation of different parts of the UK, a fairer balance of men and women, and across different professional backgrounds.

“You could have clear rules on the share of seats between the parties so that they are proportional to how people vote, rather than just being controlled by the Prime Minister.”

...

Willie Sullivan, Electoral Reform Society Scotland senior director, said: “These figures highlight the pressing need for reform. Westminster looks desperately out of touch and outdated, and the unelected second chamber plays a big role in this.

“We need a democratic second chamber bringing together voices from across the nations and regions of the UK. There is an opportunity to drag politics into the 21st Century, and begin to tackle the dire political inequality we see across Britain and create a union that people really want to be a part of.”

...

Tommy Sheppard, SNP MP, wrote: "The House of Lords is an out-of-touch and undemocratic institution – and the SNP’s position has been as consistent as it has been clear: We support its abolition.

The findings in this new report shine a stronger light on how broken the Westminster system is, how it refuses to accept democratic reforms, how it utterly fails to properly reflect different parts of the UK, and the extortionate cost to the taxpayer to maintain the Lords...."

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* I think there is great truth in this statement “Personally, I would take small steps because they’re the ones that tend to happen."


Not since 1953 has an entire provincial electoral system been given a reform. In fact there have been only five instances in Canadian history of an entire provincial system being given an overhaul:

1924 when Alberta instituted preferential voting in each district - STV in Edmonton, Calgary and Medicine Hat; Alternative Voting outside the two cities

1956 when this was cancelled as a whole, replaced by winner-take-all FPTP elections

1955 when Manitoba cancelled its STV/AV system (which had been brought in incrementally)

1951 BC instituted preferential voting in each district - Alternative Voting in each district whether having a single or multiple seats. (in multiple-member districts each seat was filled through preferential voting in a separate contest.)

1953 cancelling preferential voting in each district.


But there have been cases where an electoral systems have been reformed at least in part (only some of the districts affected).

Mostly these have been a part of a province switching to or from having multi-member districts with Block Voting versus single-member districts and winner-take-all FPTP elections.

All five provinces west of Quebec have made these changes at different times.


BC made this change in 1989 - to cancel its multi-member districts, only a portion of the province.

Alberta made this switch three times: 1909, after 1913, 1921

Saskatchewan made this switch in 1921 and 1967, with a few changes in the number of seats that one or more multiple-member districts had in the meantime

Manitoba adopted some multiple-member districts in 1915 (two-slate FPTP contests in Winnipeg's three two-member districts). It then brought in a series of changes, none of which were the basic Block Voting versus FPTP switches. It brought in STV in city-wide Winnipeg district in 1920, brought in Alternative Voting for all areas outside Winnipeg in 1924, changed Winnipeg to three multi-member STV districts, then cancelled both STV and AV in the 1950s to return to FPTP across the province.


Ontario brought in a multi-member district in 1886, cancelled it after the 1890 election.


Dennis Pilon has stated "Historically, Canada has had ten successful voting system reforms at the provincial level, none of which involved referenda."


I put the number closer to 14 or 16. But the main thing to note is that while Canadians have voted in five electoral reform referendums directed at wholesale province-wide changes (Ontario, PEI, three times in BC), only one received majority support and that one was ignored by the government.


Why should voters in BC's Peace River area, for example, get to determine whether Victoria gets PR? Victoria in the last BC referendum did vote for change.


STV is district-based system so can be adopted just in part of the province. That was how it was adopted in the only two instances where it has been used at the provincial level - in Alberta and in Manitoba, both from the 1920s to the 1950s.


To the extent that STV was used, in about 20 percent of the respective province's seats, it was effective. While the districts outside the STV cities elected a landslide of seats for the governing party, whether through FPTP or Alternative Voting, the STV districts elected mixed crops of MLAs, made up of both members of the governing party and members of a variety of opposition parties.


In Ontario's 2007 referendum on choice of FPTP or MMP, voters in five districts in the Toronto area gave a majority in favour of MMP.

These were:

Beeches-East York, Davenport, Parkdale-High Park, Toronto-Danforth and Trinity-Spadina.

All were in the south region of Toronto. Parkdale-High Park touched Trinity-Spadina, etc. It seems possible to have taken these districts where voters were in favour of change even if it was a vote for MMP, and given them STV (or SNTV, if preferential voting was seen as too difficult for the voters) by grouping the districts together.


But in 2018 the districts were redrawn, again lumping voters holus polus together in a brand-new artificial arrangement.


That redistribution could have grouped districts where voters were known to be in favour of electoral reform but instead the government carried on with its old inefficient wasteful-of-votes-and-wasteful-of-voters FPTP arrangement, just with new district boundaries.


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Concerning reform to the House of Lords

Aitken proposes that the British House of Lords be re-constituted as a body where the Lords are elected through pro-rep, seats allocated based on party vote.


This may seem to merely repeat the representation produced in the House of Commons, but actually even a passing glance at the lack of correspondence between the House of Commons (in Britain as in Canada) to party tallies shows how the HofC does not reflect party vote tallies, is not proportional.


This lack of correspondence is shown by the frequent production of:

false majorities,

wrong-winner governments,

over-representation of the two or more most-popular parties (always), and

under-representation of the other parties (always except where a party is provincially- or regionally-dominant)

regional landslides that ignore the other voters there.


A House of Lords based on PR and a Hof C based on district votes could be seen as a kind of two-chamber Mixed Member Proportional system.


Certainly it would obviate the need created by adoption of MMP in the HofC to either make districts larger or add seats, in order to free up seats to be filled by supplemental members.


That way, abolition of the Senate, the preferred solution but one with considerable constitutional roadblocks, would not be necessary in order to produce more democratic federal governments.


Something to think about...


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Thanks for reading.


Check out my blog "List of Montopedia blogs concerning electoral reform" to find other blogs on this important subject.


As well, please consider purchasing my booklet "When Canada Had Effective Voting" STV in Western Canada 1917-1971. 68-page overview of Canada's PR experience in the last century - the fight for proportional representation, the adoption of STV by 20 cities and two provincial governments in the 1920s, and STV's final use in a government election, in the 1971 Calgary city election. Available through AbeBooks.com or email me at montotom@yahoo.ca

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This year is the:

* 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 the last STV city election in Canada. Calgary elected 14 city councillors through STV, and then switched to FPTP for city elections. By that time, more than 54 years after the first STV city election, anyone old enough to have voted using X voting in a city election would have had to be 75 years old.


* 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.

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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.

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