November 26, 2004

• I live in Vancouver and largely I'm for this. It works for Australia, and they haven't exactly turned into a marshmallow of indecisiveness. Most of my friends vote NDP or Green and it's generally a wasted vote. The biggest problem I see: it will sap party discipline. Canadian governments have done better on debt and deficit issues, because our governments are strongly unified. (It also means a looney-tunes government can REALLY drain the public coffers.) And it could undermine the consensus. Antidemocratic or not, our country is moderate precisely because single-issue parties can't get elected. I think overall we'll come out ahead with STV, but I could be convinced otherwise.
• Ugh, our local elections were just done with this. I found it annoying in general, and no more effective than FPP. Maybe I'm just allergic to change.
• Some excellent links here, Freddy the Fish -- thanks.
• Any system that helps fringe parties elect MPs is a bad system, IMO. What you end up with is a big multi-party legislature that can't form a majority vote without forming coalitions. And coalitions are held together by quid pro quo promises and shady backroom deals that are never good for the electorate.
• I have to agree with rocket88. I'd rather have a government that I don't hate who can get stuff done, rather than a mish-mash of parties who can't agree on anything and waste all their time.
• 'cuz of course nothing shady happens when one party has a lock on government. Nope. I don't see what is wrong with coalitions. The Liberals have turned into a de-facto one party government as it is (federally, and in places like Alberta with the Conservative Party) and by some accounts Paul Martin is really putting the boot down with regard to party discipline these days (Trying to please George Bush, putting the screws to Chretien loyalists) I'm sure there has to be a more sensible system than waiting for whichever party is in power to implode every decade or so.
• I would take all the pork barrelling in the world than coalitions with parties from either side of the fringe, which would lead to much worse shady deals (not just economic, but political and social). Sure, I'd be happy if the NDP actually got the seats to reflect their support. But so would the Christian Heritage Party, and the Marxist Party, and even the beloved Natural Law Party (Just because I voted NLP on a lark doesn't mean I actually wanted them in government). Besides, everyone knows that the Liberals will rule Canada forever.
• first time in history the green party gets a seat in the house ... heh I was reading - or rather trying to read - the propaganda about why this is a good thing. I'm not convinced. space coyote they're politicians what do you expect? ;)
• This kind of proposal has a lot of support for the Canadian left at the moment, because leftist parties were the big loosers in the gap between proportional votes and seats in the house in the last election. So it's really difficult for me to convince my lefty friends that it's a bad, bad, bad idea in Canada. Why? Because whenever people talk about this issue, they always seem to assume that the party composition will remain the same. But it most certainly will not. Large numbers of single issue parties will rise up, because they now have a chance of rocking the vote. We're not talking the Greens and the NDP (left-leaning social democrats, for non-Canucks), we're talking the Family Coalition, the Right to Life, the Canada for Canadians. This would rapidly turn into a huge victory for the far right. Think of parliament as a big pie being divided up: A big chunk of the Liberal seats go off to the NDP. This is good, right? Well maybe not, because the NDP is getting increasingly desperate and erratic at the moment but still... Anyway, a smaller chunk gets hivied off the pseudo-Conservatives and given to the Really Crazy Party (RCP). So this looks good right? The NDP makes big gains, the RCP makes only small ones! Wrong. Experience in many parts of the world (most importantly for us, Australia) shows us that when the RCP gets votes, it gets legitimacy. All of a sudden, the media stops calling it an extremist fringe group and starts finding nice things to say about it, so that they will show 'ballence' in their reporting. The formula they come up with often looks like the following:

  'The electoral success of the RCP has enraged many on the Canadian left, but others point out that they are merely saying, in public, what a lot of people have been thinking for a long time.'

  See how it works? This reporter is thinking 'well I have to be scrupulously accurate, and many of the people they've enraged are on the left, but also I have to tell the viewer why people might actually support them...' and it comes out as 'people who oppose this party are leftists, people who support it are intelectually honest.' There are going to be people here who accuse me of setting up a straw man. But I really don't think I am. This is bassed on long experience with political changes, like this, in countries with similar systems to our own. Just look at the rise of racist politics in Australia or the rediculousely polerised fore-shore debate in NZ. The Westminster model is one that encourages consensus in its very nature. It demands that anybody who wants a share of power look at issues from the perspective of their political rivals, and that's a good thing. In the Westminster system, one doesn't win by gaining seats, but by winning ground in the physchic space of the centre. This is what the right has done, with careful propaganda, and it's what the left needs to do again if we're to come back from the political wilderness. A proportional system would free the left from this need to compromise. But what would that get us? A lot of fearce debate over irrelevancies like GM foods and (gag!) sealing on the left, while handing a political voice and political credibility to our political enemies on the right. Finally, people on the left should never forget that the left, in Canada, has much more to loose than the right at the moment. Think about it: leftist politics are basically the 'conservative' politics in Canada. It's all 'preserve' this and 'defend' that. 'Preserve the social safety net,' 'defend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,' 'conserve our wilderness areas'... and so on. Even if we had no idea of the outcome of PR (which, I would suggest, is a disingenuous conclusion) we have much more to loose by gambling than they do. They gamble, they can only gain. We can loose the things that we think make Canada a good country. We can loose bigtime.
• we're talking the Family Coalition, the Right to Life, the Canada for Canadians. This would rapidly turn into a huge victory for the far right. At the moment these all vote for the party that Stockwell Day is in. Why would getting them to be honest about what they're after be bad?
• Dreadnought, the conservatives were claiming just as loudly that they would 'preserve' Canada's social institutions. You're mixing up the status quo Libaral platform with whatever it is you're calling 'leftism' (a stupid term that implies there are only two possible political positions. Let's try a little more nuance, shall we?) The NDP was the only major national party actually advocating any real change, in environmental policy, in child poverty, in education. The Liberals and Conservatives just fought over who could 'preserve our institutions' better *yawn*
• Dreadnought: the "Really Crazy Party" might get a few members in under a purely proportional system. But the system under consideration is mixed regional/proportional. To be elected, the member has to be the clear first or second choice of a whole riding, and these ridings are going to be generally larger than we have today. I think that would shut out the Really Crazy Party. You might see a rural bloc. But their raison d'etre would then be economic, which I could applaud. Yeah, they could be more socially conservative. Worse than the members that we have today from rural ridings? I doubt it.
• Space Coyote - Dreadnought's point is that the mainstream left doesn't need to fight for change - we need to fight to preserve (or sometimes restore) what we had in the 60s and 70s. (At least in terms of government and social welfare; anti-discrimination/civil rights (eg gay marriage) and environment have some issues that need to be worked on - the former of which are very simple to solve, the latter of which are very hard.) But I think the left has to stop thinking of themselves as revolutionary. Being pro-healthcare, social security and education has become traditional in Canada - and isn't that a good thing? The left in Canada shouldn't be about rocking the boat, it's about preserving what makes our country good, and slowly improving it. The Liberals did run a leftist campaign - they were explicit that the institutions they wanted to protect were social welfare ones. Their mainstream way of presenting this reflects the way that these values have become mainstream. If you insist on them being promoted as strongly left, or in language of drastic change, I think that would undermine that support from centrist Canadians.
• Let me spell it out for you from a country that has lost it's democracy long ago: If you're on the left: Never Compromise!!! You have nothing to apologize for and everything to be proud of. Think of the advancement of civilization rather than the degradation of same. Think of caring for all, advancing all, educating all, for a better future for all. Do Not *Ever* compromise when you are working and thinking for the altruistic *ALL* in society. When you think of promoting corporations, promoting business over citizens, promoting raw power over reasonable compromise, you are denigrating society. Take some time to think about this: More than ever in Canada's and the world's history we need to each and every one of us think about what it means to be a human being rather than being a part of a political institution. I think once you have thought about this deeply you will all agree: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. In other words: Make sure that each and every voice is heard. That is what makes democracy. Not 'The Electoral College'. Not compromising to the narrow-minded right-wing, not submitting to the Taliban, Afghani or American. It means working for democracy and fairness and justice and Freedom for all. Do Not Ever Compromise Values That Embrace All For Values That Embrace The Priveleged Few. It is a rejection of civilization. These days, and for many years I have thought of myself as a 'World Citizen' rather than a U.S. citizen. I think each and every one of us should do the same for the betterment of all. Thank you for your time, I will leap off my soapbox now... And apologies in advance for those who think I was a bit long winded here...
• If the Democratic party represents "the left" in America, they're about equivalent to what used to be called the "Progressive Conservative" party in Canada (before they melded with the bible-thumpin Reform Party) The NDP would be considered Communist to our Southern neighbours.
• rocket88 Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. Democrats, Republicans: In the U.S. they really are All The Same: No Difference. The sooner citizens in the U.S. realize this, the better for all. And the sooner we can take back control of this country for the good of all rather than just for the needs of a plutocratic few. There is a saying on the wall of my room: Evil Empires: One Down One To Go. It has a picture of an old U.S.S.R. flag with a black 'X' through it and a U.S. flag opposite that. Figure it out. Here's the link: http://www.fourmilab.ch/evilempire/ Save it, print it out, distribute it widely.
• Dang, I miss the NLP! "Only a group of 7,000 Yogic Flyers can create unity and harmony in national consciousness and bring satisfaction to all Canadians." Whoosh! Come on back down here, you MPs, you! And the much more unsettling slogan: "If you favour Natural Law, Natural Law will favour you." Brrrrr.
• jb: I do not think the Left is some sort of permanent establishment in Canada. Consider what has happened in BC. The electorate were dissatisfied with the NDP government. So then we got a parliament of 77 Liberals (more like Bush-style conservatives) and 2 NDP. The Liberals have proceeded to rip up much of the social fabric in the province, breaking a lot of their election promises to "defend" various programs. BC has traditionally had these kind of wild flip-flops. Proportional rep would probably moderate that tendency. I say it would be better to have consistent commitment to some programs than these crazy zigzags. The net result would be to prioritize the programs Canadians really care about, like Medicare.
• verbose - I think we are moving to the right, but that's what I meant about the left being conservative - we are now the ones talking about conserving, they are the innovators. Problems like the "Liberals" in B.C., or the Tories in Ontario say to me that Provincial parliaments need a second house, to limit what the gov't can ram through.
• The Tories in Ontario were just undoing the fiscal damage the NDP caused while they were in power. It was tough medicine, but necessary.
• rocket88, jb: Let's not make this about any particular party or color on the spectrum. I'm unhappy when any group of Canadians is disenfranchised by our voting system. Even conservatives -- and I'm as liberal as they come. We've seen the death of a moderate conservative party -- one that was popular, but unelectable under FPTP. In its place we have a more radical party, with a regional base. No matter what your political leanings, can you call that progress? Just like in BC, they will go crazy implementing their radical agenda when they eventually do get their turn. And make no mistake -- they will get their turn. Shutting out the other guy is not a long term solution. A system where the left occasionally loses, but never loses its voice or its influence, is IMO far, far better.
• verbose - we saw the end of the Progressive Conservatives for two reasons - the strange demonification of Mulroney (I didn't agree with his policies, but he wasn't the spawn of Satan), and the rise of the second party on the right to split the vote. I don't know if that was a factor in the first Chretien election, but it definitely was in the subseqent one, at least in Ontario. The other thing is that the world has been becoming more rightwing - it's an ideological shift, fueled by books, newspapers, media. Ideology is very powerful - on both extremes it can fly in the face of facts. The Liberal party stepped into where the Red Tories had been in many ways. The reponse of the NDP has been to become too left, leaving their basic human decency roots, or at least clouding them with tactics that alienate the mainstream (including myself). But this talk of "disenfranchising" - this is where proportional and more fractured systems lead. The really extreme are not enfranchised today, or even legitimate - they must find their home in a larger party. But if they get elected separately, they will be legitimised. I have no desire to see a "White Canada" party get a seat in any house, and I don't care if that is seen as "disenfranchising". That is, of course, a worst case scenario - but it happens in places with these systems, like Australia. Their extreme rght anti-immigration parties have more legitimacy after being elected. It's because many of us have this attitude that every point is valid, and that the media has to represent all "fairly". But it's not true - not every opinion is valid. On some subjects, facts will determine which opinion is more valid than others. On other subjects, we have accepted social morals (like that racism is bad), written into our constitution. I don't want to see a Canada where we are misled by our worst extremes. I see two solutions - a) the job of the media is not to represent all "fairly" but to be critic to all, to tear away at their platforms like terriers, holding it up to the judges of reason, fact and morality (yes, I know morality is changing, that's the reason things are changing in Canada). And b) we don't have a political system that rewards extremism or one-issue parties, but demands that parties develop a broad base. I am basically a conservative person (in the actual meaning of the word) - I don't like change, and I certainly don't want to fix something that isn't broken. I don't want any system that gives more power to extremists, or promotes a further polarising of politics. Of course, as someone with a moral belief that one shouldn't stamp on the weak or poor to get where you are going (my bible includes the Beatitudes), I have no desire to see us slip more to the right. I don't know if there is a viable extreme left - but if there were, I don't think they would be much better. They would be out trying to stop you clubbing baby seals (actually a very humane way to kill a seal), when really what we need is to make sure that hospitals have MRI technicians.
• rocket88: The NDP, you might remember, lost their traditional support from public sector unions (which was extremely stupid of those unions) because they introduced cost saving measures to lover the deficit from the previous Liberal and Conservative governments - There's a reason we had "Rae days" when schools and government offices were closed, and it wasn't because Bob Rae (leader of the NDP) was handing out lollipops. They were attempting to take measures to reduce spending, without gutting services. I don't know if you live in or visit Toronto much, but there were a hell of a lot fewer homeless on our streets, homeless from all over Ontario who gravitate to Toronto, during the early nineties, despite the recesssion. Oh yeah, the recession - you remember, that economic trend that affected the whole world, but Mike Harris tried to imply was caused by the Ontario provincial government? I love Ontario, but what we do can't rock the whole of Canada, let alone the U.S. or the world. Then Tories came in just in time to try to claim responsibility for the world-wide recovery of the late nineties. It's like believing that Zimbabwean chiefs control the rain - the power of myth continues, even in our modern society. So what did we get with the Tories? Useless tax cuts, more homeless, schools without extracurricular activities (because I wouldn't work when I wasn't being paid, either - and neither would you, if you are being honest), university tuition jumping and through the roof for all professional programs, threats to overtime protection (60 hours a week? No overtime in Ontario), pointless amalgamation, and several deaths from ecoli poisoning because water inspection was just too expensive (who knows how many additional freezing deaths among the homeless?). And a WHOPPING DEFICIT and very likely ILLEGAL financial actions, the whole of which was revealed only after they were kicked out of office. Or maybe you believe the obvious lies that the Liberals just walked into government to find that massive amounts of money had been overspent, what,...by little elves? I'm just glad the Tories were more incompetent than the Thatcher gov't they were copying, or things might have been worst, except maybe Thatcher managed to actually save some money. Calling it "tough medicine" would be like saying Socrates's hemlock was just a little antiacid, only the Tories were less effective.
• I'm just going back to the original post for a second here. Another thing with using the STV system which I don't think has been mentioned yet is that it relies wholly on computers. There's no way humans can make the calculations required. Of course, if Canada has a failsafe computer system that will always be reliable and can double-check itself, it's all good. As for fringe parties being elected, I think someone else already said it's harder than you think. Here in NZ we use the MMP system and it takes a lot of work to get representatives from small parties in. The new Maori Party is hoping to get two candidates elected in the next elections, but I'd say they'll get one if they're lucky. But it does allow for the middle-sized parties to get good representation: the Greens, ACT, Christian Coalition and the Progressive Party all have multiple members in Parliament, enough to have a say and affect policy. I'm not sure, though, how different the STV system's end results are from MMP.
• rocket88: The Ontario NDP were in power during the greatest depression since the Great Depression. Despite this, things in Ontario weren't as bad as they were elsewhere. The Tories then took power at the start of the greatest economic boom since... well... forever. During this time the deficit went up, most of the social programs were eviscerated, and worker's rights were trampled. When I first arrived in Toronto, in 1989, you could practically eat off the streets. When I left in 2002 there was a major an intractible homelessness problem and people literally freezing to death every winter. Oh, and then there's the fact that when the Tories were finally booted from power it was discovered that they'd been illegally cooking the books in a massive, mulit-billion dollar Enron style fraud. Oh, but that must have been the Liberal's fault because they 'broke their campaign promises' when they found out the Tories had been lieing about how much money the province had... Tough medicine, indeed, to weed out the cancer of prosperity and social harmony from Ontario's body politic.
• STV isn't actually proportional representation (that's right, I didn't RTFA, or even RTF Post Properly, hense my earlier comments about PR don't apply). Instead, it carries with it a host of other problems that make it undesirable as a system. For example, the voting system becomes so complicated that it's really difficult to explain, to ordinary people, how their vote counts. This means voter dissafection. Secondly, electoral districts often become much bigger. The size of ridings in Canada is already a problem, with campaining difficult across the vast empty spaces between settled regions. Imagine if -every- candidate had a riding the size of, say, Southern Ontario... Thirdly, multiple candidates in each riding makes it much more difficult to get to know who your representatives are in parliament. - My Westminster MP is Anne Campbell (Lab, Cambridge). I think she's doing a pretty good job. I follow what she says in Parliament, and if she says something with which I disagree, I can write to her and tell her. I bet that, if I did so, somebody from her office would a) actually read my letter, and b) write back. - I have no idea who my European Parliament MEP is. That's because I don't have one. If I remember correctly, there are seven MEPs from my electoral district (East of England), and I don't know the names of any of them or what any of them think or say. Even a politically engaged citizen, such as myself, is completely cut off by a faceless and diffuse system. Take these critisims for what they're worth... Having said all that, BC politics is messed beyond belief. Things will be much, much better there when people stop insisting that politics should and must be a soap opera.
• To all: I apologize for taking jb's bait and helping derail this into party-specific politics. It ends here (hopefully).
• It wasn't bait. It was a reference to how a party in the current FFP, multiple party, one-house provincial system can push through legislation while having been elected by a plurality but not a majority of votes. This has been a problem for many of us in both provinces, and one of the reasons people are supporting alternative voting systems to the first past the post. I was saying that I think we need a second house at the provincial level, especially since the most important government now happens there. I would support a proportional second house. The whole STV thing just confuses me. I tried reading the links, but couldn't figure out how it was suposed to work until a friend somewhat explained. What is the MMP system?
• rocket88: ok, I'm clearly biased on this but a) I don't think jb was baiting, and b) I don't think that this is all -that- much of a derail in a thread about Canadian politics. As I said above, people are intersted in these reforms precicely because of party political issues. While people might throw around rhetoric about different systems being more or less 'democratic' (whatever that means), what they really mean is that they want to bring in a political system that would increase the electoral success of parties they agree with. And while I'm on the topic of the great red herring of 'democraticness', I want to say that we should get back to thinking about the Canadian political system in a Canadian way. The purpose of our electoral system is to provide for responsible government, not democratic government. Democracy, in Canada, is but a means to an end. Provided the end result of the electoral process is a competant government that feels responsible to the people to do a good job, then I, as a citizen, am happy. This is why I think unicameral provincial parliaments are problematic in Canada. The Ontario Tories were able to stay in power by setting voters against one another. They didn't feel responsible to the electorate; they saw the electorate as responsible to them. An upper house would have been able to slow down their 'reforms', expose their fiscal malfeasence, and stop the government using public money for partisan propaganda and small targeted 'tax refunds' in exchange for votes. Bicamirality would be a far more useful reform than any amount of messing around with the voting system.
• It was jb's choice of examples of what he considered "problem" governments that was baiting. And yes, you both are clearly biased.
• Nah, I'm biased about jb, as we're engaged. I'm not biased about Ontario politics. I lived there, and still call it my permenant home. I saw what happened to the place with my own eyes, and have formed firm and consistant political opinions about it. That isn't bias, it's opinion. Now if I was against the Tories because my uncle was a Liberal cabinet minister or something, that would be bias...
• Mixed Member Proportional representation. I only really came to understand it fairly recently, but it seems like a fair system to me.
• democracy is SO last season. FASHION dictates that this year everyone will be wearing anemocracy (government by the wind), capelocracy (by shopkeepers), paedarchy (by children) or perhaps pornocracy (by harlots).
• oh and ponchos are totally "out"