What would electoral reform in Canada look like?

Jordan Shortly before Canadians gave his Liberal Party a second minority government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remarked that after the election he would be open to looking at electoral reform.

Trudeau Clip 2021 …if ever there is more of a consensus, it could be interesting to follow up on. And I’d be open to that because I’ve never flinched in my desire for ranked ballots.

Now, for many of us, this announcement felt like deja vu.

Trudeau Clip 2015 We need to know that when we cast a ballot, it counts. That when we vote, it matters. So I’m proposing we make every vote count. We are committed to ensuring that the 2015 election will be the last federal election using first past the post.

Jordan That was Trudeau promising to do away with Canada’s first past the post system before he was first elected in 2015. So to hear him say he’d be open to electoral reform six years after he promised he’d do it, and five years after he could have, was disconcerting. Was the Prime Minister merely pandering in the final days of a close campaign? Well, probably. Was there even an option for electoral reform on the table at that point? Probably not. But if Canada was to reform its electoral system, what could that look like? Who would benefit from it? What would it take for it to happen? And if a full and proper plan was on the table, would it actually become law? And if so, how?

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Max Fawcett is a political writer and commentator. He has written several pieces from all sides of the electoral reform debate. Hello, Max.

Max Hey, Jordan.

Jordan Why don’t you start by explaining at least according to what they generally tell pollsters under our current system, how do Canadians determine where to put their vote?

Max It’s interesting. It really depends on who you ask. So there was a poll that came out after the most recent election from a pollster called Research Co. And they said that half of Canadians said that they voted strategically. Now that figure seems a little bit high to me, but it speaks to the fact that there is a large portion of the voting public that doesn’t go into the ballot box voting their heart. They don’t go in there voting purely for the person or the party that they want to. There are some strategic considerations that are informing their vote, and that’s a reflection of our electoral system, where in a lot of writings in this country, the person you want to vote for may not be a viable candidate, and you may want to vote for another candidate to stop a third candidate.

Now, you know that’s the essence of strategic voting, Liberals have dined out on that for as long as I’ve been alive, telling New Democrats that, well, you can vote for the NDP, but it’s a wasted vote. You should vote for us because only we can stop the Conservatives. And I think it is one of the deepest frustrations of a lot of New Democrats in this country. And, you know, Conservatives use the same argument. They used it with the People’s Party this time around where they said, well, you can vote for Maxime Bernier and his crazy freedom party, but you’re just going to elect Justin Trudeau. There was actually a front page cover in the Toronto Sun the weekend before the election that said exactly that. That a vote for Maxime Bernier was a vote for Justin Trudeau. So strategic voting kind of spans the partisan spectrum in our country. And I guess it depends on who you are, but it’s either a virtue or a vice.

Jordan I want to ask you in a minute how that plays into the Liberals calculus so far, at least. Not to introduce electoral reform, but first, what happens to our democratic process when so many people… and I’m being anecdotal here but I feel like in this past election, basically, everybody I talked to wasn’t voting for who they really wanted to, they were voting strategically. What happens to institutions when that’s how people decide who to elect?

Max I think they become weaker. There’s a lot of talk about how the Liberals won 159 seats with barely a third of the popular vote. And David Hurley, who was a former campaign manager for Paul Martin or senior Strategist, at least for Paul Martin, joked on his podcast that if he knew he could win elections with a third of the vote, he would have done it. I think there’s some truth underneath that, which is that democratic legitimacy depends on being seen to command a proportionate, or at least approximate amount of the popular vote. And our system can produce these sort of wonky outcomes, and like you said, you know, it really did feel like a lot of people in the last election, maybe not 50%, but certainly a large slice of the public were kind of voting using factors other than I really like this politician. And I hope that they win. And I think in the long term, that is damaging to the whole system, the whole of our democracy. And that is more important now than I think it’s ever been.

We look at what happened in the United States during Donald Trump’s terrible time in office. And you see this in some parts of Europe now, in Brazil, the rise of populist authoritarianism has not gone away. And we can’t just assume that democracy is sort of a fixed part of the landscape. It will be there forever. It’s sort of the political gravity. Gravity can change. And so we need to be mindful of the fact that the public believes in and has trust in our institutions. And if we keep getting elections like this where people don’t get to vote for the person they actually like and want to win. I think a lot of people are going to opt out of the system entirely. They’re simply not going to vote. You know, turnout was down a lot in this election, and eventually that will kind of open the door for populist demagogues and other opportunists to propose a system other than the one that we have. And we may not like that outcome.

Jordan So why haven’t the Liberals taken up electoral reform the way they promised when they were first running for office in 2015? Is this because obviously they’re probably the only party in the country that can win a minority with 32% of the vote? Or whatever it is, it’s simple political calculation. And that sounds bad to say, but like I could see it.

Max I think you’re right. Almost invariably, whenever a party proposes electoral reform, they’re doing it from a position where they’re not likely to win an election. The Liberals proposed this when they were in third place. They were behind the NDP in 2015, and they were behind the Conservatives. And, you know, it was sort of a bit of a Hail Mary. If we get into power, sure, we’ll change the electoral system. And then what happens always happens is when the party that proposes this change actually gets into power, they look at how they got into power and say, well, maybe we shouldn’t change the system too much.

I think a part of it is also that they were very sensitive to the fact that you can’t change the rules of the game unless you have an agreement with the other players. So they didn’t want to simply force through a new electoral system if they didn’t have the support of the NDP, the Conservatives and the Green Party or some substantial minority of those parties. And as the process unfolded in 2017 and 2018, they didn’t have that. The NDP and the Greens wanted to have a national referendum on the change. I think the Liberals quite astutely realize that that would be a recipe for failure. We’ve had these referendums before. I’ve been part of them in BC, where we’ve had, I believe at least two of them, maybe three, and they don’t tend to go very well. Part of that is because proponents of electoral reform tend to be their own worst enemies. And part of it is because it’s very easy to argue in favor of the status quo. It’s very easy to scare people about the risks associated with change.

The Liberals didn’t want to have to go to a referendum. They didn’t have the support of the Conservatives. Everyone kind of wanted a different outcome. And I think they concluded that it wasn’t worth the political fallout and it wasn’t fair on some level. But I think maybe that needs to change. Maybe they need to reassess that now and do what is right for, if not the country, then at least the democratic process.

Jordan And that brings us to what the options are for the next few years. Prime Minister Trudeau said in the fading days of the election that he would be open to opening up the conversation around electoral reform. So maybe before we start that conversation, what are the two competing options if we were to look at an alternative to our current system?

Max So the two main options are something called ranked ballots, which is what all the major parties use to elect their own leaders right now. So we’re very familiar with that in this country. We already use it in many respects, and I’ll sort of circle back around on that in a second. And a proportional system where it’s not winner take all, where the seats in Ottawa more accurately reflect the popular vote. And so you don’t get these situations where the NDP gets 17% of the popular vote and gets 25 seats, which is just a little over 12 to 13% of the seats nationally. There are these purely proportional systems in countries like Italy and Israel. We wouldn’t be using those. No one seriously proposes those for Canada.

The system that is generally proposed is something called mixed member proportional, which they just used in Germany to elect their latest government there. It’s used in New Zealand, a Commonwealth country with very similar institutions to our own. And it’s sort of a hybrid of a proportional system and the first past the post that we have now. So under a mixed member system, you would elect local representatives who, you could go into their office, take your concerns to them. They are tied to the local riding exactly as they are today. But there would be a proportional system that would be layered on top of that, where you would also vote for a party and seats would be assigned on that basis. So you would get an outcome that more closely mirrored the popular vote. It wouldn’t purely mirror it, but it would be much closer than our current system. So it’s sort of a Goldilocks solution. It tries to be the best of both worlds.

Ranked ballots are a little different, and caveat emptor, they’re the ones that I prefer because they are the closest to our current system. They don’t require major change. They’re not confusing, which tends to be a challenge with electoral reform, but they allow people to rank as many choices as they want. You know, in a given writing, I may have a preference that goes just beyond who I want to win. I may want to rank them 1, 2, 3, or 1, 2, 3, 4. And the way a ranked ballot system works is if nobody gets 50% plus one of the first place votes—which in our current system doesn’t actually happen that often, two of the three federal leaders didn’t get 50% plus one of the votes in their own ridings—then what you do is you knock the poorest performing candidate off the ballot. You take all of their second place votes, add them to whoever they were for, and you see if you get it. If that doesn’t happen, then you knock the next person off the bottom of the ballot until someone 50% gets plus one.

So the beauty of a ranked ballot is that it allows you to vote quote, unquote strategically. But it also lets you vote for who you want to vote for. So if I am a New Democrat in Toronto, but I’m worried about Conservatives winning. I can vote for the New Democrats. That can be my number one choice. But then I can put Liberals, too, and I can put Conservatives at the bottom. It just allows us to express a more complete Democratic opinion, and it gets rid of, I think a lot of the cynicism that strategic voting can breed. Under a ranked ballot you get to vote your heart and your head, and I think it’s an easy solution. It’s an easy fix. It’s not complicated. It won’t confuse people. And it would, I think, improve voter turnout. It would improve people’s satisfaction with the Democratic process and maybe head off some of these concerns that we have about our system not being satisfying to voters.

Jordan I’m going to poke at that a little bit, in particular, because of something that came up in my election night conversation with David Moscrop when we talked about what the possibility of meaningful electoral reform really was. And one of the things that he said that stuck out to me was, well, if the Liberals were going to do anything, they would, of course, go to ranked ballots because ranked ballots benefit the Liberals because they are almost everybody’s second choice, and they would probably enjoy a plurality for quite some time under that system.

Max Yeah. I mean, David is not wrong in the sense that the Liberals are the most moderate of the national parties. And ranked ballots definitely promote moderation. I think that’s a virtue. I think, especially in the times that we’re facing right now. Having a system that rewards consensus, that rewards moderation, that rewards appealing to the largest number of people is better than a system that rewards loudness and sort of a difference of opinion. That is my enduring concern about proportional systems. That’s why I sort of go back and forth on them. I’ve written in favor of them. I’ve been a little critical of them. And what worries me right now is that if we had a proportional system in Canada, a mixed member system like the one they had in Germany, the People’s Party would have substantial representation in Parliament, and that worries me. I’m not John Ibbitson. I don’t think they deserve a voice.

And that is the danger of a mixed member system is it would breed these sorts of regional parties, these single issue parties, grievance parties, and they might get representation in Ottawa. A ranked ballot, there is no universe in which the People’s Party would ever get elected or any other grievance based party. And I think that’s a virtue. I think that’s a great thing. Circling back to David’s point, would the Liberals be in power forever? No, because the other parties would respond to the system. I actually think that a ranked ballot is really good for New Democrats because as it currently stands under the first past the post system, Liberals cannibalize call it 20% to 30% of the NDP vote every election. I’m convinced of it. You saw polls showing that the NDP was polling upwards of 20%. Where did their vote end up? 17%? That’s a drop of about 25%. And I think those votes are people who when pollsters talk to them, they say, yeah, I’m voting NDP. And then when they get to the ballot box, they go, I can’t let the Conservatives win. I have to do this thing I don’t want to do. I’m going to vote for the Liberals. If we had a ranked ballot, they wouldn’t have to do that.

And the other aspect of that is that, yeah, the Liberals are the second choice of a lot of New Democrats, but the New Democrats are the second choice of a lot of Liberals. So if you look at a situation like 2015 where Thomas Mulcair was leading in the polls coming into the election, I don’t think the Liberals would have been able to swing from third to first the way they did. I think he would have been our Prime Minister in 2015 if we had had a ranked ballot. So I would just encourage New Democrats to think a little more ambitiously about this and kind of understand that they can form governments under ranked ballots just the same as Liberals can.

Jordan I want to ask you a little bit more about proportional representation because this is an interesting question, whether or not fringe groups or fringe parties would be represented in Parliament under this system. Because presumably we could tweak the system to have a minimum threshold percentage of the vote, the same way we do now if you want to get party funding or whatever. But also mostly from a philosophical point of view, I think I 100% agree with you. There is no point in trying to platform the kind of stuff we’ve seen from the PPC, but wouldn’t proportional representation also allow a bigger voice for parties advocating for climate change like the Green Party or for socialist welfare policies like the Communist Party? Leaving aside the problem of how we deal with parties that push hate. Don’t we want a wide coalition of voices in Parliament?

Max I’m definitely open to that argument. I think Germany is a very good example of how these things can work productively. The sort of situation where a party like the PPC would be a power broker in Parliament is almost non existent. It just wouldn’t happen. So advocates of proportional representation are right that, you know, under a proportional system, yes maybe fringe groups would be elected, but they would sit in the corner and be ignored by and large. That is definitely a reasonable criticism. Proportional representation advocates remain their own worst enemy in the way they engage with the public and engage with other people.

Jordan Explain that quickly, if you can.

Max There is just a level of stridency and a level of sort of ideological purity that is off putting. I am an advocate of ranked ballots, but I’m open to proportional systems. I would support them if they were put to me as a choice between that and first past the post. But I was called a liar yesterday on Twitter. They attack you as though you are their own worst enemy because you support a form of electoral reform that is not the form that they prefer. And that’s not how you persuade people. That is not how you win over the public. And that’s why I think Liberals were very right to be worried about the possibility of a referendum on this issue because it would not go well. It would go the way that the referendums have tended to go in British Columbia, where the status quo side tends to win.

That’s a whole other issue. But as to your your question about isn’t it valuable to have more voices in Parliament? I think you’re right. I just worry about what those voices are going to say because let’s say that we have a 5% threshold for inclusion. The People’s Party based on the national results, they were at 4.95, wouldn’t have made it. But the proportionality would be applied regionally, so by province, and they were above the threshold in Ontario, they were above the threshold in Alberta, they were above the threshold in some of the maritime provinces, and I think they would have been above the threshold nationally if we had a proportional system because a few People’s Party voters ended up voting strategically for the Conservatives, as we discussed earlier.

So I just get nervous when a group like that would be given oxygen under a proportional system, when under a ranked ballot system they would never see the light of day.

Jordan Last thing I want to ask you, leaving aside the proportional representation versus ranked ballot, what kind of appetite is there in Canada right now for electoral reform? And I know the Prime Minister said that he’s open to it as I mentioned. It did kind of reek of a last few days of the campaign promise. I’m trying to get a sense of the lay of the land and which way the wind is blowing in terms of are we just talking about nothing right now or is this a debate more Canadians will be having soon?

Max I think that it’s still very much an elite conversation, an elite debate. I think the people who get animated about electoral reform are very animated, and I respect that. I include myself in that community. But I think for the general public it is not something that rises to the top of their agenda. Right now, they are far more worried about COVID, about getting back to work, about their jobs, about child care, about climate change. The minutiae of how we elect people to our National Parliament, I think falls pretty far down the list. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything about it. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t a pressing issue for our elected officials. Sometimes their job is to see down the road and see the issues that haven’t risen to the top of the publics agenda yet, and do something about them before they do. I would argue that we failed that test on climate change. But I don’t think in terms of just pure transactional politics, it is going to be a pressing top issue unless one of the parties makes it pressing.

And I think that’s where the NDP can play a very valuable role here. They are the natural partner for the Liberals in this minority Parliament, and they can say to them we will not proceed with supporting other legislation until you put this on the table. The problem is I think they have to bend a little bit in terms of what they want put on the table. I think if they demand a proportional system, they’re not going to get it because the Conservatives will vote with the Liberals against it just as they did the last time. They will align around this issue. I think the NDP has to kind of come to Jesus on seeing the value of ranked ballots for democracy, for their voters, for their own ability to form a government one day and come to the table with that as their priority. And if they do, I think we could see something happen pretty quickly.

Jordan It’ll be interesting to watch in this new Parliament. Max, thank you as always for this.

Max Thanks for having me on.

Jordan That was Max Fawcett, and that was the Big Story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. Email us anytime, I read them all at thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. You can also find this podcast wherever you get your podcasts and at frequencypodcastnetwork.com. And you can get it by asking your smart speaker to “play the Big Story Podcast”.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow. Back to top of page