A better ballot on federal government’s agenda

[Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef, right, takes part in a Liberal caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick]

The next time Canadians cast ballots for a federal government they will vote under a new 21^st century system meant to better represent voters.

But just how we will do that remains to be seen.

When Parliament resumes later this month, the Liberal government is expected to name a multiparty committee that will have to decide just what will replace the oft-criticized first-past-the-post system that Canada inherited from the British hundreds of years ago.

“We have a problem that we have to fix,” says Kelly Carmichael, executive director of Fair Vote Canada. “Justin Trudeau has said that we’ll get rid of first-past-the-post, which is a great starting point.”

Since the First World War, Canada has had 16 “majority” governments, though just four of them actually won a true majority of votes, Carmichael tells Yahoo Canada News.

The Liberals have a majority government after winning 39.5 per cent of the popular vote in last October’s federal election. Those votes were concentrated enough to win them 184 of the 338 seats in Parliament.

In 2011, the Conservatives formed a majority with 39 per cent.

Under this system, half of Canadians’ votes don’t count, says Carmichael.

“The results are skewed. We always have majority governments that are not elected by a majority of Canadians,” she says.

Many alternatives

There are many options to the plurality — or first-past-the-post — system.

Majority electoral systems, such as the Austrian presidential election, use rounds of voting to ensure winners have more than 50 per cent of the vote.

Fair Vote Canada advocates proportional representation, though that can take many different forms but at the root there are districts from which more than one member will be sent to Parliament according to their share of the popular vote.

Under the “party list” system employed to some degree in countries including Finland and Denmark, voters cast ballots for parties rather than individual candidates. The parties themselves decide who will fill the seats.

And the single transferrable vote system, in place in Ireland and Australia, voters rank multiple candidates in order of their preference. Those rankings are then calculated to determine the winners in multiple-member districts.

“We have an opportunity to design a made-in-Canada solution based on the best parts of different systems. I don’t think we have to stick with one system,” Carmichael says.

The NDP and Greens, who are the big losers under the current system, support proportional representation.

Maxwell Cameron, director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia, supports reform.

“Mainly because I think that in a parliamentary system of government in which substantial power can be concentrated in the office of the Prime Minister, it is important to ensure that there is proportionality in the electoral system,” he tells Yahoo Canada News.

The first-past-the-post system tends to create what have been called “false majority government,” he says.

There are many alternatives and Cameron has an open mind on their merits. He would like the centre to study those alternatives, to provide a basis for the discussions to come.

The Liberal government has ruled out a referendum on electoral reform and Cameron says he doesn’t think one is necessary.

“Referenda do not necessarily generate meaningful deliberation; they turn complex issues into binary choices that polarize opinion; and they have a status quo bias,” he says. “There are alternatives, including a citizens’ assembly, broad public consultations, electronic consultations and public policy conferences….”

In a 2007 referendum, Ontario voters rejected a mixed member proportional plan that would have seen some members of the provincial legislature chosen based on their party’s share of the popular vote.

And in 2005 and 2009, British Columbia held referendums on electoral reform, asking voters whether they wanted a “single-transferrable vote” system rather than first-past-the-post.

They said “no.”

Like Carmichael, he believes the key is consultation — and a free vote in the House of Commons.

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef will head the committee that will draft proposed changes over the next 18 months.